the blazing sunlight
hides behind the moon at night
the young poet dreams
blood on an old shirt
blankets the wanderer in
his mortality
in a meat coffin
an unknown poet softens
his skeleton bones
heavy golden heart
sinking feelings in debris
decay a lifetime
lifting him gently
the poet writes
to end this tragedy
The only thing that is real
is eternal.
We don’t just wash away.
Everything that has ever been
has made it possible
for us to be here today.
My love for you is never ending,
even though I may have to send it
through the moonlight tonight.
You know I am waiting for you,
and I am counting the days
until we can disintegrate.
.
Underneath the waves,
there’s a person
without a place.
Let your surface float about.
Be at peace in this space.
.
We are all in relation,
and there is absolutely no such thing as space or time.
Just the two of us-
male and female,
and our relation
to the energy between our minds.
.
Can you not feel me when I think about you?
I get so lost some times.
I sense you intertwined.
.
I smell your essence.
Your little habits.
True,
when I want you,
I look inside myself for you.
On a small road-
just the desert and me,
I walk alone on a pathway to infinity.
Nothing but sand for miles to see-
following the path is my destiny.
I carry on.
I pass a cactus. I pass a bush.
My feet disintegrate as the burning sand
takes its place in my flesh
(I’m a petrified man).
The sun is my master.
Under I stand.
I lower my head at his mighty command.
I carry on.
I pass a cactus. I pass a bush.
I hear the sound of the coyote.
I see the crow
following me.
I pass the carcass on which they both feed.
Having no concept of hunger and need
I carry on.
I pass the cactus. I pass the bush.
Under the sun to which I succumb
I feel my body begin to go numb.
I’ve never seen such a beautiful sight
as I surrender to the blanket of light.
Without my eyes, I can’t see the blisters.
All of the sights have turned into whispers.
I must find water, and I must find it soon-
feeling my way as I call to the moon.
“I’ve lost my road- I can’t see my way.
I’m on my knees- please help me,” I pray.
“I’m on my way to the end of the path”
I heard a sound, and I started to laugh.
It’s so familiar, and so far away.
I turn and listen to look for the way.
I feel it in me.
I hear it call.
After a moment I begin a long crawl.
It calls through the wind,
and it knows my name.
The river haunts me.
It drives me insane.
It says to me words that I never speak.
I must have water.
My body is weak.
So far away from the path that I knew,
my vision’s gone, but my direction is true.
The ground is changing-
I can feel with my hand.
A firmer substance is replacing the sand.
I feel the grass.
It tickles my nose.
It feels like magic between my toes.
Then, all of a sudden, I come to a wall.
I hit my head (I don’t remember my fall).
I have a dream in which I can fly.
When I awake I can open my eyes.
I see the wall was really a tree.
It was the shade that had been sheltering me.
I hear the stream, and I see it at last.
I take to running and forgetting the past.
Soon I am free- naked- airborne- jumping in.
I realize only then-
I do not know how to swim.
I fight the current.
I hold my breath.
My weight is determined to lead me to death.
My final shout is less than a cry
as I surrender and prepare to die.
How funny death
is more like a float.
What had seemed certain, now seems remote.
Now that I live, what should I do?
How could I know what I was jumping into?
For the first time I noticed the fish
using their bodies, they go where they wish.
(swim) (swim) (swim) (swim)
I am the river.
I am the fish.
Using my body,
I go where I wish.
(swim) (swim) (swim) (swim)
I head downstream.
I move with the flow.
Content to live within the boundaries I know.
The banks are changing.
The trees have all gone.
I feel so lonely, but I keep moving on.
Something is different.
I sense something new.
(I put it aside,
but the sound only grew)
I do not fight it, or strive to break free.
I’m in the stream, and the stream is in me.
In the stillness
of my own divinity
I sense throughout the eternal memory
this moment of clarity.
I surrender at will.
Giving way to the current I feel.
Adjusting the flow
around the ground where I grow.
…and this heartbeat I hear
holds me together
as the thought disappears.
I have deciduously stripped my colors,
and drawn in.
Locked inside my house again.
Waiting for the rain.
The candle is my name.
Sending down my roots,
and reaching for the sky.
The cold Earth,
the morning dew,
I still feel you- I always do.
I feel the wind,
and smell the change coming.
I sway in the storm
of this life. I’m becoming
this home.
This hill, this grass, has always been,
and will always be in stone.
I’ve weathered through my years.
As one I stand alone.
Drinking from the stream,
a mighty little sunbeam
comes to be
that which strengthens me.
The time I was falling
I was leaving myself behind
I was never there
I was always ahead of time
A vacant space
An open window
A long way down
A blanket offender
A series of mornings
Finding my way home
To the iron earth
I make you my own
My body is weak
But my eyes are cold steel
I will swallow my blood
And chew on the fat
Until my mind begins to heal
I walk with a wind
I puzzle my pound
I stare at the sky
And hold onto my ground
As I Have Expected
So Have I Collected
My Intentions in Extension
A Culmination of My Creation
A Dance in Chance of Circumstance
Disconnected as Expected
Unperfected and Rejected
Desolation- Despairation
Destination- Detonation
Releasing Control
Increasingly Whole
Without Any Doubt That Life Is About to be Found All Around
Contained in a Sound That I Found to Astound
Designed to Remind Us Our Thoughts Are Behind Us
Blinding Our Mind
The Sign of Mankind
We Stumble Asunder
Worry and Wonder
Cumbersome Under Enslumbering Blunder
Concentrating~ Contemplating
Captivating~ Culminating
Consecrating~ Compensating
Consummating~ Complicating
Soon You Will See.. Something In Me
Finding The Key.. Setting Us Free
Trying to Hide.. Feeling Denied
Holding Inside.. Someone Beside Us To..
Show Us The Way
And Bring Us The Day
And Make It Okay
To Throw This Away
We Will Begin to Know From Within
No One Will Win~ And Nothing Is Sin
Every Second-
Silence Sews a Secret Sense of Steady Searching
Seeing Simple People Stumble
Under Subtle Bubbles
Smothering Each Other
Stumbling They Suffer
Still, I Sit
A Single Solid Stone
Stopped Beside a Stream (of dreams) Alone
Scraped and Sliced With Sacrifice
My Surface Stings
Stowing Inside Insightful Cycle Style Circuit Patterns
Splattered Spirals Scrawled in Spectrums Sectioned in Separate Surrounding Scenes (as if in a dream) (that’s how it seems)
I Stand and Scan
For Scattered Symbols
Scrambled Symphonies, Symmetries, Sophistication, and Circulation Sensations Scripted in Ciphers-
Synchronistic Systems Suggesting a Serious Series of Sequences
I Study
Stationed in Solitaire
Sewing in Silence the Seeds of Suppression
Soon My Submission Position Will Splinter
Suddenly Sending Dissension Descending
Spinning Unspoken Disturbing Supposed Assumptions Supporting Distorted Perception Deceptions
I’m Feeling You (all)
Falling Down Again
Alone In My Pod and Praying For You (god)
Seeing Me Flowering- Dreaming Forever
Seeing the Sun Like I’m The Only One
Reaching So Deeply and
Feeling So Perfect and So Purposefully Perfectly Purply
Nothing Has Changed Since We Chose Out Our Names
Has Anyone Else Survived?
Am I the Only Person Alive?
Watching the Sheep (all pray me to sleep)
Everything That I Have Said
Still Is Sitting In My Head
Rarely Fed, and
Almost Dead
Is This a Page That I Have Read?
Is This a Drop of Blood That I Have Bled?
Bleeding Without Meaning- Every Time I Try to Go to Bed
Thinking Some Things- Having Some Dreams
As a Menial Being
Sunbeams on Some Dreams Bring Some Things Some Meanings
Freerly Seeing the Scenery Receding Bleakly
As We Speak Seemingly Discreetly
You’re Sneaking Sleepily~ I’m Speedily Seeking a Peaking Reality…
A Fallacy Failing Formerly Fortunate Families Foully
Forgive Me
Being Meaning,
Meaning Being
learning i am hopeless
growing no more numb
yearningly i focus on
how empty i’ve become
try to bring me back
try to give me air
if i should be breathing
i’m completely unaware
losing any touch
slowly letting go
forgetting everyone i’ve met
and everything i know
reaching for the sky
feeling for the sun
far enough away to feel
like i’m the only one
Ryan Burnette 