Where The Crow Feeds

Where The Crow Feeds
There is a bitterness instilled and growing. A habitat of woes poured through the grout-laden tiles. Sacrificed as brine burdened tears and inched toward desert ground below. And here is where the crow feeds. Nestled against the marrow remains. Latched onto feathered-whispers meandering stretched out corridors. He caws. Cries out and pecks the places he exists. Broken, hallowed and shamed into boney crumbs. Comes again, the agony dance. A thousand droplets drenched cascade through victim chambers, round the bowels and out into the essence of darkness. Evaporated with each pressing. A salt-lathered stain against tainted black. Beak to bone. Talon to ash. Weathered door creaks opens to an endless echo of isolation. I am this shattered bird. I am this proclaimed prey. Slathered in likeliness, prancing round the corners, where burden lives. Shifted into form anew, turned into unfamiliar, still carrying the weariness of loss. I hear him clawing at the pieces below. Beneath the marble crushings—how he weeps. How he mars the destitute of his own hallowed out regions, emptied beyond starvation. The pool of self, shaken, moved and unmoved by worlds forgotten. Edged back, he endures, counting the ways in which his agony survives victor, in which his piercing eyes pierce that which is about, lavishing the view with what seems as bleakness awoken. Terrible he is, in his misery. But terrible worse is the way in which ‘what was’ has returned once more. Again, he calls out from beneath the remnants of fragmented substance. Devastated in a state of weary forlorn. Forgotten by self, and still there, in his sheltered state. “I am here,” he sings, from beyond the trees winter foliage, drenched in muted grey. “I am here,” the song carries, far above the collapsed sky. “I am here.” And his tears swallow themselves—one upon the next—tumbling gems catching the wind. If only he could see enough to lift his tethered eyes. If only he could hear his own song, seize the dying shell, and rise once more through scattered bones.
Samantha Craft

Uncloaked

Uncloaked

The opinionated folk deems his self more worthy than the next, more educated, more correct, more substantiated in his tethered-viewings. He is the man who ties himself to his beliefs as marionette to the puppeteer. Surrendering his last performance for the making of a hopeful sequel.

He stands on the cornerstone of his own reality, perched on a soapbox made of rubbery-soles; erect in his being, creating hurts, as he plucks out the feathers from those deemed ‘wrong.’

He is the judge. And his seasoned-eyes seek out justice for self, and for self-proclaimed truths.

He creates chaos through the subconscious quest to establish an enemy in order to make himself the victor.

He seeks out that which is wrong to feed his own tattered ego.

The more he builds himself up, the more he merrily tears the others downward into spiraling nonsense.

He latches on to one truth, and then another, exchanging viewpoints to suit his individual needs. Adapting his ways to suit his desired outcome.

He eradicates plans and schemes, even as he sees this not as so.

He is blind to his own ways, and thinks himself clever and keen.

He has an eye for truth, and establishes his world as so. Truth begets truth and all else in dangerous makings of others’ minds.

He knows himself, inside and out, or so he thinketh . And in thinking in limited scope, he believes he sees the world about him endlessly.

He is the maker of mankind and the destroyer, and he sets himself on high while wearing a robe of futile-humility. Though, buried beneath the cloakings are the mere wobblings of brittle bones.

He erects flags of righteousness in his name.

He is the enemy of spirit, as he claims his views worthy and right.

He is the enemy of self, as he hides in the shadowed sands, head buried to the reality undone.

He builds and builds an illusion in order to feed and feed that which is established upon as self onto self.

He becomes that which he wishes, and has opinion for all that does not fit into his gently spawned parchment.

His arrows are as ink on treasure map, pointing thusly to where the answers rest.

He knows, and he knows naught, and in so doing he believes he is the wisest of wise.

He layers himself in the latherings of riches, sought in the grounds of others’ burdens.

He is neither miser of gold nor pauper of the trenches; instead he is both. Combined, as the one collecting and discarding. Scooping up in ‘veracious’ heaps that which serves his truth, and throwing out that which does not.

He cannot see his weary ways, and instead labels the rest unjust and wrong, except the select few that follow his way. His light shone bright in the ability to feasibly proclaim his truth as collective truth.

He is not satisfied unless others see him, others hear him, others lift him and validate his existence.

His way is made the only way. And the others, though innocent they be, gather around him as sucklings to his tainted nectar.

He nourishes them with lies—his own.

He lures them in with a sense of belonging. And then, too, they become as him: stagnant in their youth, nurturing nothing and no one, and taking as they please.

They satisfy self to please self. They play with self to please self. They collect and establish more truths.

Until the beggar returns—uncloaked—he is made burdened with entrapment; invisible, trumpeting his drum. Pounding out the horned owl’s screech. Demolishing what is, in hopes of fissuring all that is the entrapment of mankind.

Formidable-forbidding. A lingering, unsurpassed longing, to surrender his making for the unmasking of the man beneath the cloaked resilience.

Elemental Cause

To give only to give, without expectation, without gain, without bursts of ego-gratification. To give without proclaiming, sharing, and classifying one self as giver. To just give, and know that in the cornerstone of heart, whatever ripple comes in return, is merely more energy set into reserve for future gifts. ~ Sam Craft

Elemental Cause

We are riding a wave of a collective unconsciousness that predicates actions, reactions, opinions, likes and interests, as well as disinterest. It’s mediocrity made insane, and semi-tamed.

I can’t help but see this all around me, from the fashion trends, to hairstyles, to the modern music craves, to the buildings erect and idolized. Divine design is all about; and yet we cling onto that which is perceived as the collective norm and acceptability.

Digging deep into the psyche, this pattern of behavior all comes down to the desire to be accepted and assimilated, even at its assumed worse; none is left untouched. Even the so-deemed ‘reject’ or dark sheep is masked himself, surely to be absorbed by another sort. If not the masses, then the anti-masses: the secluded seduction of isolation.

To be evaporated into the state of ‘not being’ in hopes of instilling a cloak to shield self from the chaos of being. Still this shield, self-made and created for the primary purpose of protection, serves as the resistance of what is not real. And the more one opposes a force, substantial or not in it’s reckoning, the more the force that is objectified grows.

In this way, the very act of retaliating against that which is perceived as wrong, or even ‘evil’, substantiates the existence of such force, and erects it as formidable in making. And more so, the process of chastising and banishing, even pretending the existence out of view, is equally detrimental—as the energy required to dismiss something from the mind, again substantiates the value of such.

Predetermination in and of itself seems to procreate and bring into existence what is naught. That is to say that the act of accepting something as so gives the mind’s creation power. The abstract made whole. The nothing becoming something from mere effort of mind.

The more one focuses on the abstract, the more the collective eradicates nothing into something. Whether this be judged or labeled as ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in theory makes no difference. For whatever is countered, in so countering the opposite thusly grows. In so being: if ‘good’ is countered, evil grows, but good also grows in equal measure. For the act of resistance, or the force of undoing, both equally grow that which is of primary focus.

And whose mind is to choose which energy is pushed towards the one, if not the other? Therefore if I focus on the sun—the light—the glimmer of whatever one chooses to associate with the source—I also, in equal measure, focus on that which is without the light. For to have light I must have dark.

To proclaim something is good, I must establish across the scale of justice that which is un-good. To have the un-good I must create and establish rules and boundaries. I must become judge. I must have basic standards. I must start somewhere. Or so it seems.

When in actuality, I am starting not. Instead, I am as climber on the mountain peak digging down into the depths and cores of endlessness, crumbling self and existing selves that linger about. I am tearing apart my essence from the inside out in effort to eradicate that which has been established is not enough and not ‘good.’

In this manner, I am my own avalanche. I am my elemental cause excavating below in hopes of bringing up that which is tarnished—the root explanation—the growth—the cancerous vector in which truth, once established, has been attacked and need surrender.

In unmasking a truth that is neither buried or alive, in seeking to find that cause that I believe is the unmarked burial ground of chaos, I render into exactness the very thing in which I wish to expose. I become that which is my enemy, in thinking my enemy is. I become that which is terror, in believing terror reigns. I buy into the acts upon acts that in turn render treason upon my soul.

I bleed out my beggar’s mentality in the very utterance of non-equivalent. In staking claim, the spot in which the flag bears my name and flies in high-wind is the same mound of nonexistent land that becomes my territorial truth. That which I proclaim as full enemy I proclaim as my reality. For whatever the opposite of enemy becomes, there in the act of proclaiming, becomes, too, my life-blood, that which in some variant degree, though at times almost invisible, I worship.

Tis truth, then, that in being, in thinking, in existing, I am forced to form sides, to single-out camps: those that are unbearable to the mind, body, and soul; and those that are acceptable, and often deemed desirable.

In order to set my mind apart from this useless game of mousetrap, I must first scoop out that which is the bait, the essence that captures first my appetite and then manifests my fears. For if I am deeming something desirable and in wanting, in exactness, still, I am deeming another undesirable and unwanted.

That which I shun gives power to that which I crave. In the same measure, that which I long for in dream-state gives recall to that which I dread. The unbearable stakes are set; and life becomes not of pleasure-seeking quest, though the game is curtained as so; instead, my daily burden becomes that to which I seek naught and find naught eternally.

This becomes that which I claim as real. And the real feeds off as stinging nettle to skin, lingering in pain-stricken cause with reminders of escape. The mind becomes the battleground, as in action; it begins as slave to sort out the mind’s cause. The it becoming the enemy of the it, when both were deemed innocent.

How this is, is. And how this is not, is not. And those that linger in this place of knowing, in their act of lingering, substantiate the facts furthermore, building a wall between that dark and light that serves as the landmark from deep space, indication that the war has begun. And the more the battle is spun, the more victims that are laid down in erect fashion. Standing as phantom ghosts as the shadows sleep in the ground that burgeons, spun from the fertilizer of demented abstractions of formed reality.

Here is where I walk, in the weeping hours, footprint after footprint, marking my territory as mine. When all the while the burial grounds seep blood from the sleeping masses of a thousand centuries.

Strings

Strings

Bending. Bending towards humanity.
Upside down and twisted. Sideways. Backwards.
Hello. Hello, out there. I wave.
Casual-like, faking the discrepancies lining the walls of my interior.
Wallpaper: aged, peeling, unwanted.
Caution to the wind, I sail outward, into the blue societal corridors.
Painted bleak by ill doers masked in golden-tainted grimaces.
Castaways, alike, we gather into cylinders of being, turning inside the encapsulated thoughts.
Syringed through penetrating drops of nothing.
I am not what they preach, nor say, nor whisper in the cornered room gone viral.
Tentacles forward, burrowing through the broken skin, tantalizing the soul with promises.
Undone, again, in the region born from goodness, now made bitter-sweet in its giving.
How I long to climb the mountain high and scream out the bounty brought onto us—the widow’s heart eternally mourning for the lost child named innocence.
How, if given opportunity, I’d purge the demons from them all, and dance upon the grave called fear.
How I’d rip then, apart the hearts donned black.
Forging, grasping, into the misery found there.
Stand then, we would, upon the cornerstone of our calling, without the stage bearing down beneath us.
And speak no more of these times.
When darkness held the strings to emptied puppets turned asleep.

Samantha Craft, 2014

The Way of the World

The Way of the World

1. They lash out and blame. They put themselves first, thinking they are enough, they are right, they have the answers. They see through a thin veil that blinds them. They know nothing, but proclaim to know everything. They do more harm than good, but blame the others for their harm. They can’t see themselves, so they throw stones at others.

2. They think they are special, unique, one of a kind. They absorb up love and attention, and seek out more. Though they remain empty, they think themselves full. But ever hungry, they suck on others, taking what is not theirs to begin with but thinking themselves owners of others’ praise and wellbeing. They take and take and rarely give back. When they do give it is only to self-serve and reclaim something they think belongs to them.

3. They recreate events to match their expectations and previous knowledge. They rationalize by reinventing the past into a feasible version that upholds their limited belief system and attachment to self-created truth. They believe what they want to believe at the expense of anyone else that stands in the way of holding onto the illusion they have created as reality. Their close mindedness keeps them trapped in this imaginary land of what is and how things are, and to justify their truth, they grasp on to anything that supports and uplifts their fantasy. All else remains false, for once exposed to the light, once rationalized or erased by another’s view, the person upholding limiting beliefs would suffer a greater consequence than death, the discovery that they aren’t right.

4. They think another is trying to hurt, damage, or expose them. They hide in these shells of protection from a cruel world. Some of them the most boldest and fiercest of all in mannerism and behavior, yet still hiding. It is a self-serving molded shield, a way of bouncing off what is said and told by another, and instead focusing on the potential harm. All words can pose as potential threat, so all is deciphered and filtered through a discriminating and judgmental funnel. What appears to be caution is in actuality an inability to listen to another’s perception and ideas. The person is so focused on self and self-preservation that he or she destroys the opportunity for growth. The others are neither seen nor heard, and shy away, or steer away, afraid that they too are merely invisible to another.

5. They think that the others just aren’t there yet, just don’t know enough, don’t see enough, aren’t ‘enlightened’ enough, and they hide under a false bravado of thinking themselves better, not because they are better but because they believe they have been gifted by some great unknown force the answers others know not. Instead of understanding the concept of all, they understand the singular concept of one, believing they house the answers, and feeding of others who they assume do not. They are not humble, but claim themselves so. They are not wise, but think they are the wisest. They are not enchanted or magical, but claim the vacant spaces of people’s hearts as their own. Taking what is not theirs, and occupying places that neither belong to them nor welcome them.

6. They make blanket statements that are mere clichés of society, gathering up the bits and pieces of their history they like and discarding the rest. Finding parts that make sense to them and them alone, and using this as the bleeding-poison on their spearheads. They shoot out their truths as if their information gathering were holy and true, as if their way is the right and only way, as if one person, one human, could feasibly represent the truth for all. They hide behind dogma and closed-mindedness. They tinker with new ideas only if the baggage they already carry approves of the new hitchhiker. They do not believe in anything except that which serves their purpose and calling, and in this way they believe ultimately in nothing.

7. They are envious but cannot see their envy. They call out for attention in ways that are marked with seeking. Yet, they seek not through obvious measures. Their weeping is evident in the masks they don. All that is is not what it seems. Attention is sought through victimization and martyrdom. That which is brought out into the light, isn’t submerged in the light at all, but instead absorbed through the egoless-portrayed, and the burdened sponge of self-reasoning and self-exposure. Those that occupy this habitat of destruction do so for a direct cause: to self-preserve and build the self further. Their taste is bitter, in so being their words seem as honey but taste as sulfur. The burdens they carry are never laid down to rest, but dredged up again and again for the misery of self. Those who labor this way, rest in their own filth, and know naught. Instead they are the ones quick to point out the meek and feeble-minded. They are the non-innocent turned inside out to appear sweet and fragile.

8. They are the ones that see only as they wish to see, and make claim to know that what they see is truth. In this way in which they view another, they hurt another. They know nothing except what is before them, and any threat to their existence is alarming. They harbor deep regret, and through this regret they feed a deeper seeded insecurity. They do not like other people, simply because they are other people. No one need substantiate their unworthiness, as they are viewed unworthy without action or marking. No further analysis is needed: He who is not the other is not enough. This is the way of the ego to supersede vengeance with comparison. No one can hold up to the high expectations, and all are made less in this one’s presence.

9. What is said, they twist. No matter the cause or reason, the words are made wrong. The power of this trickster is to take what is real to one and make it false, thus shaking the foundation of the other, and making the other mistake his own being for wrong and false. This is a game made by two: The first being unaware as he approaches the marked one, the second being too born into the game to care. They create a battle out of no weapons and no playing field. What is not true to one is true to the other, and so forth. So that the one is damaged in not existing as truth, and the other is built upon within his barriers of being right. This is the way of most of the world, where one is claimer and the other erased of self-proclamation.

10. If you are not what they expect then you are not good enough. You will fail if they think you have not upheld your end of the bargain. Before you were even born they set out to make standards of measurement, to bind you in their self-serving laws and rigid ways. As you approach, they surmise your weaknesses and abstract from you your very strength. They don’t see you as a potential threat. You do not scare or harm them. But yet you frighten them at an unseen level, at their core of belief. For where you stand does not suit their judgment, and the lines they draw become blurred and undone. Where you stand doesn’t fit their infrastructure, and yet they cannot place you elsewhere. Their boxes therefore become empty, but not before judgment is made and verdict passed. In so making you not enough and wrong, in so ostracizing and rejecting your essence, they are able to keep their rigid race running. In so claiming you enough, they would erase their very selves

The Trinity

I am that scaffold—I am the one standing on the scaffold—and I am the wall being scaffolded. I am the one being built upon, the substance being offered, and the one offering. Again, this trinity upon trinity.

My self is endless and to pinpoint an exactness is to remain stagnant, an impossibility in an ever-expanding and ever-imploding world.

You are the missing piece, and the missing answers, but in truth, I am the missing piece and answer; for you are merely a nearby reflection pointing the way back to the foundation formed—the sideway walls, and the vertical mass slathered in circumstance.

I do not want promises, nor predictions, nor even possibilities. Instead I long to be sheltered in a knowing that nothing will change still, even as everything tilts and spins about continuously.

I long to be held, as the nearby one turned into union, enveloped in a space of adoration, chosen, given and returned to the whole from which I came. Released into captivity, back to the cornerstone of faith, before reason and inquiry established doubt.

I can no longer stand on the platform broached, the planet that holds and teaches to rise again and again with each coming fall. I can only drift, the lost traveler found, and stand face-to-face with her own homecoming.

I am essentially alone, battling my way across a field of war with no soldiers, no weapons, and only the sound of the horn. And yet I am the horn. I am the sound carried through the empty space of nothing, and I am the ear in which the sound follows: a tail of faithful foe twirling round in loyalty—the hound come back to master.

Again, I wonder, and cast out all of everything, only to return more broken and forlorn, leaning upon my established perch of knowing, singing a song as bird gone wrong, trapped in the latitude of frozen sky. If ever there was a time for rejoicing the lost soul, it is now.

Though, even as I glide through in the darkest gown shredded, tumbling through imaginary ghosts and imaginary grounds, I feel alive. Torn open and let out. Free. My every soul-bone and soul-blood moves in irreplaceable manner. Reemerged into the grand merry-go-round—a child no longer asleep.

Weeping Angel

Come through this yonder window, sure enough, your destiny laid out, say spread out, in endless gratitude. Can you not see you are as the perennial sunrise, lifting and falling again in the dynamic order, so granted upon you as blessed soul?

There isn’t time for this faltering now. Not now, not then, not ever; yet still you gather your wishes like tourniquet turner, twisting your own heart to stop the moving blood from shattering your form.

Can you not but still your starlit hope and causation and dodge the merrimaker’s scheme? Can you not sit in the silence of remembering and call us back to return from whence we came? Are we not far, as the dew drop is centuries away from the flower ceasing? Wherein the blooms themselves make way for the slivers of refreshment, forgetting without recall the source from which substance slipped?

Can you not stand witness to our eternal flame and call out to us, again and again, your voice a hallmark to the centurion that came before? Twice we have knocked, and twice thee have failed to answer; not from mistake or bewilderment, or even argument of unreason; twice you have failed because as the doorman asleep at the guard post, you have let the demon’s venom seep in. Grant him permission once more, and have it be the death of you.

We beseech you from the corridor of our hearts, merged and joined as one, why do you let him suffer you so, when all about the angels dance in delight from the victorious voice you have submitted to the masses upon hill? Can you not see us rejoicing in your glorious establishment, uplifted by you and you alone? Singled out in our celebration from the cause that is you—the result that is both here and there, and circling the eternity forevermore named: us.

I am not, as you are not, and still you press your pain against us, thinking the wall, hard and stealth and un-answering be. Truly, how could such agility exist, such detriment to the soul, to abandon that which is our very limb, our bloodline to what is called ‘the universe’? As wire, as twisted branch, as communication rendered, you are, and we move into you as quicksand to the land of empty, sucking in that which is corrupt and damaging, to bring forth what is merciful and pure.

Trust not the voice that haunts you with falsehoods and broken truth, that forbades you from your journey of love, that empties you in fashion better fit for a tyrant emperor than the speck of fairy gold you be. We dance, and dance, we do, for the sight of you. We call out to the night regions in answer to your daunting prayer-whisper.

Can you not know we are here, as always, still rested delicately at your side through your every move? There is no singular my love. There is no absence. There is no without. Always, always, always you are surrounded. And we carve you trice and trice more to remind you of the reunion of our souls.

There is nothing fonder than the resending of what was never set a drift. That which believes in separation is separate. That which embraces love’s abiding joy is increasingly set against the seams of spirit joined. You are that which is us. When you ache, we ache. When you care, we care. When you rejoice, we rejoice.

Do not dull the light which is us. Merely set the all upon the window sill of gratitude. Light the candle which is our forbearing, and breathe in the glory of our coming. Do not fear our gentle, gentle sweet child. Though you be lost in what seems a time warp of unhappenings. Gone again into the self you know not, to come out only the same as before, you are churning with the burning heart of Christ-love, and in you the victorious one rises in peace.

Seek not the answers outside, my dear abiding one; seek within, into the stillness of your heart. Behold your true value in the outpouring of our words. Did we not grant you refuge time and time again, from the life of child to the life of grown ancient one? And still you question our authority, as if we be dormant through all this span of space.

Again, we beseech you from the cornerstone of our very existence and being:

Please fear not child, for only fear breathes the dragon flame, all else remains beautified in a state of eternal uplifting peace.

Join us now in prayer, and submit to the light that is you. Sin no more with your punitive pensiveness claimed recourse from the punishment you alone proclaim. Come out of the shell of dodginess and self-righteousness. Justify yourself no further. Prove no more. Be no more. Only breathe in the eternal graces that we be.

Barren

I am searching beyond the starlight into the caverns of unknown, the deep dark space that collapses into itself and leaves me barren with questions.

Scraped out and open to all that is. All that will be and has been.

How am I, in this space of no space, ascending beyond without leaving within?

Am I not just a fleck of nonsense absorbing the currency of thought, scattered dividends of yesterday’s theories; my own mind the orchestrator of a tune that erects circumstances.

Had I not been where I’d been, where would I be? And how is it that everywhere I go there is this pressing truth of not being?

Am I free-floating in the vicinity of reason, circling as particle passed the orbiting truth without recognition, skipping by what is there, blinded to what exists? Bumping into random spectators and retreating through the passenger train of strangers.

Am I?

Or does this being reflect the potentiality of what could be, the waiting point, the singular place of beginning brought back to itself from the end?

A loop of circular life, receding and retreating, bleeding out and returning to the outskirts of humanity.

I am tormented but the totality of thoughts circumvented, as breech baby turned stillborn.

I am this drudger of no-man’s land, excavating desert storms and transforming the blind into seers.

This one with emptied eyes being the essential self, left barren still.

And Here I Dance

There is a sweet surrendering in my heart, in which I am in the presence of my higher power, under a command so nurturing that I cannot help but feel a part of Source itself.

I am alive in every part of my being, and I am happy to be.

When the troubles come—the aches of life, the devastating desires that leave me psychologically and spiritually drooling at the mouth, and in a temporary state of total disregard to my disciplined practices of removal of attachment and the process of opening to submission; driven backwards, spiraled into a place of before, steered by this one afraid of the future, doubtful of abundance, and weary of the judgment of onlookers—still their remains and underpinning of strength and resilience.

Sometimes this state lasts longer than a spell; sometimes it catches me like a net, and I am but again some jagged edged fish trying to cut out of the entrapment of self.

Again, I submerge into this place of dismal ‘daunting-ness,’ doubtful of my light and truth. Doubtful of my calling.

And I suffer here in all degrees, tortured more so by the hauntings of my mind than by the demons about.

Still, in this time, I am made aware—some observer abstracted and set about to mediate the fallings that transpire.

Here I am free, in a sense, unlocked from the earthly bound me, and set high above the dwelling that is neither home nor happening, but this invisible battle between that which is and that which is naught.

Time and time again, I return as foe to myself, only to surrender to that which is all abiding: the light of love.

And here I dance, within and without, borders lifted and fenced-being undone.

I cannot help but rejoice and seem as mad man set out of the cave of darkened days. Arms flailing in a manner suggestive of a playground symphony.

Rejoicing. Rejoined. Recognized.

I am what I am is what I return to; this someone etched by this something, belonging to neither time nor singular purpose.

Still, I am

What is it about me, this invisible someone, that is made to feel irreversible in her vulnerability and compassion?

Shall I move as jester, through my past, and pull out the elements of cause, or shall I instead, center myself here, in balance, and move through as water, exploring the avenues of my reason?

I am this and I am that, but still I remain the same. Some unidentifiable, ever shifting substance. And yet, the others, some of them, the few I suppose, find pleasure, or at least vitality, in claiming me for what they see, for what they believe to know.

I don’t know. It is such a randomness, this world; how it plays out like a ring-circus-game. Leaps and bounds, rest, and cheers. Thumbs down or cash collected. Divided, dispersed, and brought through again, we are, as clever dictators unraveled into mice. Round and round our cages.

I cannot understand where I live, for whom I live, and for whom I breathe, if not for some higher purpose or good. For some reason beyond this limiting float-less self, that sinks beyond barriers and rules, and becomes blade between what is and what is not. Spinning her motor and dissecting the whole into various parts of nonsense.

I am affected. I am affected over and over by the toxins of the world, by the very labeling of the words, by the birthing of word, by sound, by vibration, by all that exists as movement. And all spins. All spins past me and through me, and in me, cycle upon cycle of life and death.

And still, I am.

Unrecognizable in this outfit I have constructed. Not recognizable in reflection. Not motionless enough to grasp or comprehend.

The worse of it, this variance of invisible self, coming when the demons approach, with their envious ways, and hunched backsides. Seeped over and over in righteousness of self and prosperity. Wanting to dominate, control, center life around their essence, success and wholeness.

How they penetrate me, this semblance of substance I am, with their wicked ways.

I am to them what they are to the world. Untouchable. Lustful. A chaser of dreams. I am to them this evil set inside to turn a spell.

And it is here I sit; not long, not for an established time, not for ever, just for a speck of eternity, in their shell of claimed humanity, in their piercing-bellowed echoes of judgment and non-acceptance. In their shattered self replaced with hate.

Here I sit as them, and breathe out what can only be torrential rains of days gone wrong. Where hollowed out souls screamed for comfort and received none. Where the brevity of a callous life became the very sword that slashed out eyes to all that is. All that was. All that can and will be.

If I be surgeon, then to them I would establish sight. To see again, if only for the splendid second of recourse; that all is, has already been, and will be; continuously spun by the emptiness spawned, until surrendered, and brought up again into the wholeness of All.

And then, and only then, set right upon the laws of justice, the opened-heart revealed, with all that is naught set asunder into the flowering of self, shall We breathe again. The falling retrieved, and the masked silence brought to life as one voice of freedom birthed.