DARK DESERT HIGH NOON    (around 1988-(?); in my tiny garage apartment; Leucadia, California)

               
               
how many more tiny rooms                
must i move to and live in                
before i can move and live no more                
how many more small rooms                
boxes                
and cramped  dusty spaces                
await to further contain me ahead                
like these bits of residual dust from my past                
still trapped inside all these cardboard  moving boxes   stacked up  unopened in a tight corner behind me         which hold so many scattered  good memories             artifacts  broken  kept pieces                
of the real life i once lived and had           
which i still cling onto only to help bouy                
the now much different remains of my present life         even though i realize and now know all too well             that even that part  these special uplifting                
physical remnants of and from my once more                
vibrantly wild and adventurous  now long passed life     that it all still nonetheless continues over time                
to only further fade and slowly rot away                
stored for years in all these old boxes                
of letters  artwork and thousands of photographs           like supplemental ghosts of all those special memories from that part of my life s collective journey                
now pared down to this  my new reality                
this my dark desert high noon                
but clinging onto even that                
and all those physical reminders                
of even the best  good parts of my now distant past     also in it s own way                
only continues to further entrap                
and bog my day to day life down                
simultaneously and unconsciously      
by distracting and blocking      
my conscious awareness      
from being and living more fully present      
here in this continuously unfolding now        
causing me to increasingly limp my way                
through each new day i m given                
as i struggle to drag my way through them  
one at a time  ad infinitum      
like a heavy anchor in repetitious                
much too routine circles                
only digging my inevitable grave                
a little deeper than it already is                
in which my wearied mind only seems to further fill      
in ever increasing degrees                
with more and more worries  strife  doubts and fears     with varying levels of justifiable  inner anger and rage   in existentialist response to what my once life                
has now so shockingly  so horrifically                
presently become                
and what it might have  could have become and been   and potentially still could be now                
had only fate not dealt me as my future non existence this bad hand  which i drew myself                
unknowingly at the time                
by choices i made through my own free will                
to become and be  this my cheated                
but nonetheless still blessed  present life                
now come so thoroughly all undone                
which i couldn t see coming at all back then                
til now at this strange point of it s continued                
ongoing  seemingly never ending                
further new subtractions                
oh well                
around and around and round i go                
again and again and again                
wherein i  and we  each in our own ways                
eventually  inevitably                
will each and all fall down                
on the bleeding  skinned kneed mythologies                
of our desperately backward societies                
and our entire species                
self destructive  all destructive                
no longer sustainable  metasticized ways                
where and when will it all ever end                
and where in this ongoing meantime                
might it even further more deeply more shockingly      
more tragically  unconscionably                
unconsciously descend  before then                
and when will we ever  if ever as a species                
begin to wake up  awaken and see                
the countless errors of our species still ongoing             disconnected  unawakened  unenlightened                
dead end ways                
for this is the life  this living  conscious                
so wondrously beautiful and mysterious planet             our world and one true home                
we ve all been blessed with and miraculously given     wherein we are presently  each and all                
as it were and still is                
square pegs relentlessly struggling                
to so futilely fit into the round holes of everything else  
of all that is  in and of                  
this wondrously beautiful  ever mysterious  conscious  living earth  to no avail                
where nowadays it seems to me                
that every time any of us now                
all fall down increasingly                
on our own bleeding  skinned kneed                
personal  ego minded  illusory mythologies                
that now we each and all                
not only further bloody                
our already badly bleeding knees                
for now we each and all                
are also picking up so many painful splinters                
and so many other new  unnecessary self beatings      
to even more heavily weigh  wear                
and slow us down  ever more deeply                
more intractably                
into so many new levels of                
nowhere                
as the captive bird                
and these strange human birds we all are                
in it s and in our long suffering pre destined cages         we re all  already so ego blindly                
still so obliviously living in                
continue to subtly                
but not so subtly                
nor so suddenly in some                
begin to only increasingly stiffen                
age and further congeal                
in our human bird like                
individual and collective                
greedy  self centered                
apathetic  compassionless ways                
yet the invisible bars on all our individual cages             cannot truly  inescapably hold us in                
if and whenever                
all we still sleeping human birds                
ever come around to choose                
through our own innate nature s free will                
to change all our deeply flawed                
no longer sustainable  completely failed ways                
to finally ever begin to more fully awaken                
or to not make any changes at all                
towards achieving that critically essential goal                
but for those who choose                
through their own free wills                
to not do so          
then the fate they ve chosen          
and co creatively made for themselves                
unlike most all truly caged captive birds                
whose life long lifetime s destinies and fates                
in which they themselves have no free will say in         at all                
were already sealed and done                
from day one on                
ever since they first were caught                
or became  through no fault of their own                
captive  caged prisoners for life                
so too this metaphor fits                
as a similar truth for both species and types                
of literal and figurative                
captive  caged birds          
feathered and human alike          
regardless of whether they were                
self imprisoned by free will choice                
or unintentionally caught and caged for life                
for just as the caged bird s singing                
has now come to a silenced stop                
due to it s death                
or perhaps due to it s possibly                
contemplating more deeply                
the truer  inner meaning                
of such existential fate s gains and losses                
whether through fate alone or by choice                
or maybe it s simply afraid                
of any new  sudden changes                
beyond the lost freedoms of permanent cages                
beyond fact  beyond feathers                
beyond brains        
beyond fiction and non fictional          
or beyond something else        
all together        
mysteriously        
other        
unknown        
beyond all that                
beyond all analogy  metaphor  rhyme or reason            to try and pin down time                
as basic structures of mankind s                
previous and current                
no longer viably sustainable        
rapidly dying  old  long past archaic now        
patriarchal paradigm                
are even now  ever increasingly caving in                
collapsing completely  falling down hard                
where my now undeniable                
rapidly running out of time  internalized feeling             along with that other bottom line                
even more deeply sensed                
subconscious  innermost  intuitive knowing                
i have so far completely and only repeatedly failed      
at both either further suppressing                
or constructively dealing with at all                
along with all it s other much more subtle                
countless  immeasurable                
ever increasing  collective  innermost                
silent grieving  thoughts  feelings                
doubts  fears and grievous loss                
each and all stemming                
from my much deeper  much darker                
gut level  subconscious fears                
overwhelming feeling s                
of all this  my intractably unresolvable                
ever growing sense                
of bleak  bleaker  bleakest                
sheer  lost  utter hopelessness                
now every time i go into my room                
i seem to sense  feel and detect                
the most terribly worrisome                
undeniable  faint  sickening smell                
of my own sickened breath                
of my own sickened flesh                
that universally familiar                
instantly recognizable                
most primordial  sickeningly sweet                
putrid smell of fast approaching death                
a truly scary thing to so clearly detect                
especially when it s you yourself                
when and long before you ve even begun to die yet     but every time i smell or suddenly become                
that acutely aware of it                
i immediately begin to slip and fall                
right back down into the morbid depths                
of that all consuming                
so hard to climb or pull myself back up                
out of or from                
that slipperiest of dark  darker  darkest                
of grave like  treacherous rabbit holes                
in which the crippling walls                
and suffocating ceiling above me in my sick bed here   increasingly begin closing in on me                
so claustrophobically entrapped                
with no known way out at all                
mentally  physically  psychologically  emotionally         and spiritually stuck and held back                
in this ghostly existentialist                
too long prolonged  too long sustained                
dark night of my soul s                
ongoing        
yet seemingly still alive                
but not truly living at all anymore                
here in this my present                
still long lost  twilight zone limbo                
which i still continue                
to so vainly try and do                
everything i possibly can and even more so                
to so desperately strive to cling on to        
my so very far from perfect                
though still so mysteriously beautiful                
equally frightening only life i ve ever known           
in this wondrously challenging world                
in which and where i still remain                
so disconnectedly stuck                
between this temporal  illusory                
three d  physical world                
and several other colliding worlds within worlds             
unseen  unknown by most other people and beings     not presently  empathically walking  living        
nor existing in my shoes                
where i am still  nonetheless                
despite all that                
within it s broader context                
barely even human anymore                
in my own eyes                
and in the eyes of most other                
much healthier  still living  human beings                
as even the dim lit light in my room itself here                
begins to further withdraw and grow                
even more ominously dim                
here in this non hypochondrial box                
of my own ever deepening  life leaving gloom                
as my old  already now  so long lost                
external world and more vitally functional                
healthy  happy life i once knew  had and lived                
now all continues to more rapidly thin and narrow         as everything now still left                
of what little s still left of me here                
in this indescribably unrecognizable                
current version of me                
in which i ve now somehow                
so tragically become                
and of what little s still left these days remaining           of all my previous connections                
i once had and so immensely enjoyed                
out there in this greater                
wondrous world of the living                
i m no longer a true part of anymore                
which are now all only internally capsulized                
subconsciously compartmentalized                
completely unseen  unawares        
unbeknownst to me now          
so deeply buried inside of me here              
in all these vice like        
pressure squeezed thoughts        
and unshakable feelings of impending        
long prophesied  end time s doom        
in which i ve unfortunately          
only recently here now become        
so thoroughly capsized by        
in and under        
the heavy  emotional weight        
and complex  spiritual gist of          
i also          
truly and most surely am                
wherein and in which                
seems my mind can now only                
keep mindlessly spinning around                
in counter clockwise  dark spirals                
like hovering circles of buzzards                
patiently circling and waiting for me to die                
high up over my sleepless  nightmare bed                
i so very seldom  if ever                
even sleep in anymore                
due to insomnia  neuropathy                
and a nightly head full of profoundly haunting                
deeply psychological  near unfathomable                
seemingly never ending                
increasingly restless  sleepless  inner quandaries         too many to even count anymore        
where i am here  even now                
seemingly still so impossibly stuck                
in the bottomless  timeless  dark depths        
of so called death s                
slow  steady black hole s                
so convolutedly and impossibly entangled                
inescapable implosive pull into so called death s           cosmically insatiable  all consuming vortex                
omnipotently sucking away at everything there is         in this materially manifested  illusory  3 d existence      
including everything and all which i too am                
steadily pulling me  sucking me in                
in this my very own great  inner mystery                
of transcendent  quantum                
physical and spirit entanglement                
along with the additional  strange  peculiar                
negative  reverse  inner gravity s tidal pull                
of this my present reality s                
inescapably relentless                
all consuming  dead end fate s                
harshest and hardest                
of necessary life and soul lessons                
seems i ve so suddenly been cast into                
the deepest  darkest depths of it s still                
medical and scientifically  mostly unknown pathology s catastrophic  life thieving  global abyss s                
full blown  progressive  symptomatic                
darkest of all living hells on this earth                
so early at this tragic point                
in and of my still very young  independent                
free spirited  moved out of state                
wild  curious  adventurous life s                
now so unfairly  so violently                
completely stolen and taken away springboard            into these my still early years                
very beginning  previously newly unfolding adventure of my now unrealized                
life journey s  potentially much brighter                
unfoldment s  full  optimal future life story s                
now forever denied        
or perhaps only differently labeled now                
alternative  walking dead  zombie s tale        
contained here in        
my new so called life reality s                
constant daily struggles                
at trying to do my best                
at doing my all                
to simply just keep hanging on                
while never giving up on        
continuing to keep on courageously fighting                
at  out and against                
all my ongoing struggles  to not so simply                
just keep on precariously hanging on                
by the very few now                
mere frazzled  thin threads i have left        
of hope  inner strength  will power  desire                
faith and belief in any such spontaneous miracles       as healing through grace                
which i still may or may not have left in me here           to access at all today                
although now  after so many years of all this                
to my surprised disbelief s mystified relief                
somewhere out here still now                
even more lost than ever                
but persevering as always                
equally as  strong as i do             
in my still deeply shocked                
utter  spiritual  stunned wonderment s                
heartfelt awe s  hard earned                
soul deep gratitude                
that here i still yet am                
so mysteriously  so miraculously                
still yet physically alive        
and living as best i can        
but which i  in some other ways                
still cannot here presently yet                
even begin to describe                
at this point in my life                
wherein  and in which                
i m somehow still feeling so hopelessly lost                
herein this vast  waterless solution s                
drought stricken                
dry  empty                
still burning                
inner and outer                
external desert s ongoing                
existentially still unsettled        
still unresolved        
still yet unfolding        
still just as morbidly uncertain as ever        
even if i m only              
metaphorically speaking        
here now        
in this my        
dark desert                
high noon s        
self descriptive        
way overly wordy        
bittersweet        
not so little
anymore      
existentialist      
      poem