Heaven In The Darkness; Eternity & Hope

Maybe there is a heaven? Heaven might be the black nothing of vanished memories and endless night? Or what we make it? Anything else, no matter how charming, would certainly include these memories. These short films I live with here in this hell.

This grey would rise, following into that shining city, like pet pollution; a smog that refuses to lift, becoming more dense in that miserable afterlife, I could never end. Hell such as this would be more appropriate, in its eternal pit of serpent and flame.

Behind these eyes are the fires that portend to reflect my pain. We lost you five years and two months ago today. I think about us and try to imagine you helping to douse all that’s enflamed today. It could be little more than a fantasy, you discovering a way through the cracks to save me from myself? I might have lost you anyway? I understand that. But at least the world would be a better place with you remaining in it.

I miss the way people would look at you; stare at you even, so striking, like a beautiful crash, you’d attract angular vision. Even though I tried never to show it and you never said it out loud, you liked the innocent way I could get jealous. Little secrets we couldn’t always hide though we tried. I never really believed I was good enough for you, though you never provided me reason to doubt it.

Sometimes I imagine you’re going to read this and write accordingly. It’s the rock of grace revealing an inner truth. It’s that hope you inspire. It’s that impossible dream reflecting upon a lake in motion.

If you were with us still yet, perhaps, beyond my grip, I’d be discontent. Your soul was my apex of promise, your loss, the final crushing blow. Be well in the darkness, my love, where the past has no future, no present, no hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five-Thousand Miles to Truth

Are you looking up into the great space tonight, my dear? The enormity of the sky above seemed to synchronize our minds in the darkness, alone and together. Is it all just a dream or worse, an intermission before the final act? Whatever might be, or is, I find some comfort at least in the thought, that no matter how far away, we can still look upon that space as one.

Do you recall that day in December? A flight across the entire country just to tell you the truth? All I had to go on were the tiny fragments of our silly conversations. The only way I could find you was to assemble the clues you slipped into these fragile secrets. The big city seemed like it could have swallowed you whole?

Five thousand miles, four cabs rides and three coffee shops later; I saw you standing there. Like an angel fallen from the highest places, my courage caught in my throat. That quick glance you gave me, the pause that followed mid-sentence, the smile.

For a second I wondered, had this been a poor assessment? Would an apology be enough to overcome the distance that immaturity had swollen? The second look in my direction was all I ever wanted to know. From that day forward, till the day we all lost you, I promised to love you like I did that day on the outskirts of Boston, 15 years ago.

Is it the fresh snow or is it the collapse in temperature that follows the winters storm? Whatever it is in this nature all around tonight, you feel closer this evening than in some time. Do you still believe in me? I miss you, of course, but it’s more than that at this moment. It’s like you are smiling at the thought of it all and realizing, all over again, that true love lives on.

It wasn’t like me to just jump on a plane and off my comfortable shelf. Five thousand miles isn’t that far when you consider the distance in between honesty and the truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ENDLESSLY WAITING: A MACHINE OF GHOSTS & GRAVITY

It’s possible, some say, that not so far in the future, we will upload our entirety to a device. In such, some will continue to live on, forever, flashing and speeding upon the face of a microchip; humanity paused, then lost, somewhere within the magnetic gravity of a machines binary certainty.

Man in the machine: the desperate final attempt, a last gasp in tepid futility. prescient in, and above, immortality. The future speeds towards a select few, those worthy enough we’ll somehow judge, to remember forever.

What sort of demented chaos could erupt from the madness of this intranet of ignoble thought? Will the ephemeral be replaced by the digital? Will the past remain in record or will it become of no consequence for the whirling minds of material thought?

Imagine if you might, uploading every craven thought, every glorious memory, every moving picture onto a machine, -modern as it might be- the mass of a Tahoe Snowflake in May. Imagine being one stuck, flowing within the circuits of a server, connected to trillions of snowflakes, a current falling into the undertow. A trillion trillion rivers of formerly existing material thoughts.

Imagine losing the very human ability to move, to dance in space. All while gaining the silicon tools to speed across and into many billions of lifelong memories. Moving upon this ultimate collection of structured memory, you get lost in the branches of a seemingly endless maze of intellect; your body once a gangly hinderance, it now remains of scattered ash and electric dust.

I try imagining you in this machine, my dear. Poured into the machine, but a database, your mind and memories available any moment I’d like? Your voice calming, you relate to me, across the immense gulf of shared memories. Our shared experiences a language of base two.

Just the thought of such madness truly frightens me on this cold night. If this is the future, our memories synapsing forever, our lives now terminally paused; I sit and ponder the thought of a forever, forever, and would rather not wander that internet alone.

Why would anyone want to go on inside a machine?  To live without a life forever? It’s no life. There is no forever.

Universe’s end in an absolute dance of frozen death. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SHOW ME HOW TO LIVE IN YOUR PRESENT, MY BELOVED

Eternal loss; we were not the first to experience such chronic, cathartic suffering. In the immediate aftermath one drifts like fresh snow, inconsolable and building. The damn days crawl into weeks, months, the forces of gravity, time arrested within the space, slowly diminishing past truths. It’s as if the total mass of my being slowly evaporates.

The burden of the grief, that weight decreasing the further onward we plow. The crushing forces of regret and sorrow wrapped around my heart like a Boa, an evil snake which could never be pardoned, no such reprieve, no such mercy. I could run, but not race. I can fly, but not soar.

Even on this winter’s night, some 10 short years later, the terrible pain lingers, in an acute unrequited love, through a strain that uncolors every fresh beam of light.

You may not know this, but the few years I studied at university, I majored in physics. The laws and rules of science heavily influence my process of rational -or irrational, as it were- thought. After the great scientist and thinker Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity way back in the very early 20th century, a new, confusing way of possibly describing time and space developed: that the past, present and future, everything we know of history and all that we will experience of the future, are all happening right now. That is, our perception of the world we live in is little more than an illusion.

I struggle to envision a truth so antithetical to my perception. What does it mean? What does it say about our primitive understanding of the greater beyond? And in some way, these possibilities stifle my reason and prevent my life’s advancement? The unknown unknowns lend oxygen to that ancient ember of hope, rather than the more comforting belief in heaven and hell; that which strikes upon faith.

That she’s really better off in that next life where it’s written we could be together again. It strikes me square in the face: religion is but a clever tool created by men, that all men could bear the heaviest of loss.

If I’m wrong, so what of it? If I’ve thought wrong and the answer indicts my complete lack of faith, I’ll pay that price in a new Hell I suppose.

Show me how to live in the present with you still present, my love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Our Love Has No Beginning, My Hate Has No End. #loveletter #atonement

If you could send me even the smallest clue, I’d give it my all and everything to hang on and be true. Are you out there somewhere in the aether, some greater dimension? Are you a part of the universe, or have pieces of you shattered and scattered, adrift on a plane without direction or meaning? If all that is left are the tiniest of pieces, then how is it that a complete picture of you dances above, so calmly, so frantic, upon the darkest of night? Are you there, is it you, or a brutal allusion cast upon my tomorrow? I lie asleep; am I only watching nightmares that loop? Are we all endlessly waiting? 

You know, don’t you? You remember the pledge we made, that morning, under a vanishing rainbow? You claimed we could be copies of ourselves for eternity, tattoos upon the skin of our ancestors broken, bleached bones.

Funny, I can still recite so many of our ridiculous vows, even after all this time. Even after your final climb, alone, through the atmosphere. I can’t let them go, like I can’t hold on. So I stand here alone, on this stormy shore, hoping a message will wash up on the land that shakes. It is forever rolling, shaking over the undertow. 

Is this battle I’m waging worse than the wars I fought so far from here? Would you even know me still, under the skin and in spite of these scars that still bleed and ooze? Would you be the one to save me, or would I bleed out, cold and shivering in the understanding shade of your shadow?

Guess I’ll never know? Not guess, not me, my love; Not anymore.

So wherever you might be singing tonight, in sparkling pieces or whole, I pray so hard for your comfort and reduce the rest of my gratitude for a pocket to keep alive, but small.

They say atoms can entangle. Those that have combined, have collided with enough force to connect. It’s a mystery of science, so it seems, the spooky motions in perfect unison over distances equal to the age of the stars. Equal to the distance of infinity. So much we cannot comprehend my dear. My beloved.

These little morsels of atomic mystery and doubt and theory: they burn so hot within me sometimes. I could never completely let you go when so much is still misunderstood. None of us live in this place forever. They can’t keep me here.

Please don’t be angry with me or chastise me… “you fool, quit wasting your time.” Funny thing, there is no time remaining, only space offering the faintest of hopes. You’re still out there, I can really feel it; or at least synapses flash now and then, gritting my teeth, driving me on through the storm.

You’d be proud of my service to duty, of that I am certain. It’s all I ever wanted you know; to be tested and make it through the cauldron and back to you. Alas, I scrambled and toiled and killed and cried and burned and hurt and suffered the eternal longing, only to lose you at the end.

Like a commandment broken, I was atoned of that beyond my control, the ultimate sacrifice, you. That feels so self-centered, does it sound so? Nevertheless, I judge myself responsible for thus, reckoning and pain that creeps along beside me, like the bloody servant of Job.

All I ever wanted was us, and I sacrificed that for the gravest of sin. Two wrongs cannot make it right. There is no other way to live day-to-day with this smell of death upon my hands.

But am I really living? Are you really dead? Are you gone? Maybe this is all upside down and I cannot even see what I truly am? That I’m the one in hell? Are you still at home while I burn in this fire, suffering close to silently, nearer and nearer the final destination I scrape along, prolonging the destiny of ashes cemented in black back when?

If this is hell, this is where I am.  If this is life, where do I begin? If this is death, how will it end?

I can almost taste you, my love. I can almost touch you, touch me. I miss you always. I miss you already.

 

 

SMALL TOWN, BIG ISSUES.

It’s playing out like some lost episode of Twilight Zone or here in my temporary hometown. For such a small population the drama here runs deep, with much of it, in one way or another, orbiting the local city police department. Let me briefly share some observations and quickly describe some of the recent events.

Recently, the newish police chief, hired from out-of-state within the past couple years I believe, was placed on administrative leave, according to local reporting, after a complaint was filed by the former police chief accusing him of unethically moonlighting his private security company. Apparently, after a local business contacted the department asking for an assessment regarding reducing theft by shoplifting, the good chief said “we don’t really have time for that, but my business has you covered for as little as $600.” So tacky. Not surprising though considering the fact that the local Walmart had life-size cutouts of him in uniform at the entrances looking scary and pointing like, “don’t even think about stealing shit here.” These displays have disappeared. Huh?

Maybe a month ago, an officer responded to a call reporting gunshots only to somehow having his weapon taken by a man who attempted to murder him, firing like 6 9 mike-mikes into him before driving off in his prowler. Another words, the poor Sergeant was captured responding to a call involving known weapons, 5 blocks from the department. The story seemed like it would have a happy ending? The fucker was caught and the officer survived….only to die 10 days later during a relatively safe surgery on a damaged eye. So sad.

The weird part of this story, beyond an experienced officer being captured, is that supposedly the night he left for work he told his kids that “I think I am going to be shot tonight.?” What’s up with that? It’s not like this is South-side Chicago or West Baltimore. You envisioned being shot, then, responding alone to a shots fired call you get yourself captured…beside your own prowler? It just seems incredibly unfortunate?

The latest piece of de-di-de-di Twilight Zone, is last weeks supposed murder/suicide at a local motel on Thanksgiving, with the crime discovered the following day, according to the local paper? The initial report went: 4 found dead in room after employee found man crying in hallway. Employee looked in room then phoned 911. The “person” is not considered a suspect. Then today it comes out that the man was the father of the man who supposedly committed the crime, the husband of the older victim and grandfather of infant. The young lady, wife of suspect, was also murdered for no apparent reason, or at least no reason discovered to this point? 

A horrific tragedy that deserves more answers considering what we think we know. See, the man who was found outside the room crying is a former local police officer. 2005 to 2009. No information as to why he worked for only 4 years? Maybe transferred to a different agency? We don’t know, but the story is they were staying at the hotel due to them leaving the state soon. Huh? They lived here all this time but need to stay in hotel before leaving? The initial story included the young woman’s employer gushing over how well they liked her. Nothing about her leaving the state or her job? 

4 people are dead, so yes, something is terribly wrong. And yes, the police may know more and aren’t saying yet? The unknown knowns we have today would cause anyone to do a double take, right? The reporting so far has many holes, so many I won’t even begin. No matter what else comes out, or doesn’t, the scale of this tragedy feels enormous and must be impossible for anyone personally involved. I can’t even imagine.

I said all that to say this: a small town, too much tragedy and crap for just 3 months.

The final creepy chapter here has only tangential meaning. About 2 months ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine -who is Air Force police- about people who travel in the city openly carrying a sidearm. In my opinion, if you feel the need to be armed in public, get a concealed carry permit. The idea that openly brandishing a weapon in public, in the United States, makes most people unnecessarily uncomfortable and offers zero confidence in heightened safety. I could make an exception for the man or woman headed into the wild or returning, say, at the gas station or whatever. But wearing your .45 to lunch at Subway is wholly  inappropriate and ignorant.

The reason I brought the subject up was that that very day I encountered two different people armed in this manner. Both clearly made the situation uncomfortable with their decision, judging by the furtive glances by both employees and customers at the businesses. The creepy thing is, when a photo was released of the murder/suicide family, the young man accused of the crime was one of the very same men who were open carrying that day in Carl’s Jr. I remember clearly because later, we also ran into him and his wife with their infant at Starbuck’s, sparking the conversation. Weird.

This is a detour from my typical posts, I know. I hope it wasn’t too boring? Have a nice day! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giving Thanks & Missing the Grey Shores

You were the star of my dream just now. We were in Maine again. The holiday at the shores of the grey ocean, behind the granite wall of great boulders that appear to have been placed by Zeus himself; placed one by one to shield his people from the crashing thunder of the hunter’s moon. You tasted of salt and aloe that morning, the yellow sun falling up at our backs, waging its glorious war with the last evenings mist, turned to mornings fog; Like the runaway mist, your hand in mine would burn the demons from my aether.

We were there again if only for the briefest of space. Dancing like fools subject to sin.

I remember what you said, as the sweet drift of the grill lifted my senses to give permanent thanks: “we deserve this lobster, right? Just not on such a perfect evening alone.” I disagree, and your green eyes flash; picture a shutter capturing an entire story of unrequited love.

If I ever believed anything at all, it was that I’d never lose the memory of those eyes. Now I seem to have nothing left to believe in, my darling, my paramour.

Dreams are uncovered through the absence of a sense of smell. The moment I realize, it seems, is the moment I shed a single tear. In this way dreams are like films, home movies that star a litany of ghosts. They only relieve my sorrow for that moment before I awake. Then begins this conscience nightmare projecting a future that’s upside down and abridged of bliss.

You’re never coming back. I know that is the absolute truth. Even if you wanted to, the ship of destiny has sailed and I could never catch up. I wish that wishes could come true. I wish and I wish and I wish, three times or maybe seven, but it only reveals me as the ignorant fool. But I wish again. I sometimes wonder if the opposite was true…would you wish too?

Is it already the holiday in your new space? Are you thinking of me, those crashing shores, the smells, and that salty food? If you are, my dear, then I am too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silhouette’s & Perfect Views

There’s this picture I have posted in the near reaches of my mind.

It’s a silhouette of your face and body set before a hundred mile view.

The distant mountains and full harvest moon.

It’s so sharp in the low-light, cool, arctic air, and so unmistakably you.

The lasting, personally striking images are captured from beyond your conscience view.

As you studied the warm sky that stretched out so far, across a sea.

Do you remember what you said that night?

That you would finish setting the tent so I could go check out the glorious view.

What I didn’t say, but thought; was it’s far more striking silhouetted by you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe Love IS a Battlefield

Who did that song from the 1980’s, Love Is a Battlefield? Something my ever cool sister would have been listening to I’m sure. Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Tori Amos maybe? The hook crossed my mind this morning as I waited in line to vote. All this time and effort I’ve put in trying to put the experiences and disappointment of war on paper in a way that makes sense and the most salient truth’s been all but completely avoided: That my period in the Army has utterly destroyed my desire to be loved. How can a man go on with life in any meaningful way without that most basic human desire?

If the war had somehow changed me into a sociopath, the question might be moot? But as much as I’d like to erase my desire, -I have tried to do as much- the fact is, life is vacant absent the wanting of a beautiful woman who could have anyone else. Maybe if I hadn’t known of such wanting, hadn’t tasted the fruit, I could continue peddling onward in ignorant bliss? That kind of passion is like a narcotic. Once you’re dependent on its product, the chase is compulsive and autonomic. Picture an oak leaf, brittle and superannuated, with nothing to lose.

If love is a battlefield, then war is a drug. Killing is ecstasy and true love a crime. There is only two things that matter in a world so filled with the stench and the aroma of dying and desire. That you kill the man who is plotting to kill you. And a lover that’s been desperately waiting with a singular passion for the warrior you are and the lover she desires. It’s a paradox, a lie that is also true. In order to kill another man in battle, the sane man must give up his humanity, and therefore, his passion and empathy are lost, ever fading from view.

All this may seem or sound more complicated than it really is? There is the spiritual, the ethereal nature of things and then there is the practical. How can you share life with another when the act of sleeping itself is fraught with danger? The terrifying dreams that play out in the dark, when I finally do step across into the darkness often grip so tightly that my physical self responds violently. More than once I’ve destroyed a clock, or a phone, whatever’s within reach. To wake-up with a severe pain in my knee from the thrashing that can occur while asleep is unpleasant sure, but how would that affect an innocent partner? The sudden burst of rage that rises up from the depths over a matter previously unnoticed, like someone too close in line, or the screeching of a chair moving over a tiled floor? I’ve avoided action till now, but will that last?

Most importantly, how could I ever love another if I only am able to hate myself? Still today I avoid and shut out those in my life who truly care for me without expectation or need of remittance. Where do you even begin in such a turbulent atmosphere?

Truth is, I miss you. I do. I say I’m trying, yet the truth is I don’t even know where to start? If I had it to do all over again would my destination find me any different? It’s in the code. I’m on my own. No use in wishing for an angel to fall and cast my soul back upon that previous shore. The die is cast. The future is already written and these words are part of the stone. No need to reminisce and dream of what could have been. If we were meant to be together, we would have been.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TINY LITTLE DREAMS OF YOU MY LOVE

It’s so cold here I’m numb, in this yellow sun splashed memory of us, once, alone, close, together. Do you still smile and giggle when the powdery fresh snow makes that sound as it crushes in between the rubber soles of your boots and the sidewalk? Do you still think of that night with glee, as we traced ancient patterns upon the pristine pond ice, with the steel edges of our modern era skates? Can you remember those words once spoken…”I don’t even seem to really know you anymore?” That impression from you, my exposed ego, so painful, so uncomfortably wise, it still echoes within the walls of my irredeemable mind. True moments, like those [these] are rare elements indeed.

There’s this dream that precedes the terror. You’re all alone, walking away from the Central Avenue telephone, wind in your hair, my shadow falling upon your gaze. I’m barely even there, no hope to spare, but you; you’re a part of everywhere. It’s a tiny little dream, this clip that never makes noise. I listen so hard for the human sounds, until it returns to dark extensions of moving. This film stars the ghosts and it escapes so quickly, like a rainbow on the horizon, or an unrequited sigh. It’s the one thing left that I can still call my own. I believe in you still. Does that make me a fool?

If there’s time, I’d love to share my thoughts on infinity. Picture us napping on that couch from the world war. You’re sleeping so soundly as I travel the virgin trails of that temporal mind. It’s a special trust to rest like this. I value your surrender, in the deepest sleep, yet still so close. You’d wake and ask, “what time is it,” as if you’re surprised I’m still here? It’s quantum entanglement, our atoms became one upon this galaxy, together forever, the trillion, trillion, trillion connections in all dimensions. The matter that binds our dreams no matter. You’d say something like; “God you are so dumb.” It is haunting how simple the best of our lives truly are. No drugs, no liquor, the chemical intercourse is organic, and brilliant. I yearn for that pleasure so high up it floats. Not true love, but true nature.

“Don’t forget to live,” you say, the last time we walked along the path beneath the birch and birds singing their songs. What did you mean? Was it something so obvious that it’s hidden from my view? If our souls are of the same matter, does writing, or crying, or laughing and dancing even matter at all? You gave me everything, and still? It’s more than nothing at all.

There is an epic full moon coming they say, only 9 days away. It will shine 30 percent brighter than moons for a hundred years to follow. Look up my dear, on that satellite that glows so bright on that windy night. It’s the closest we can get to together, watching the orbit in suspended perfection, all four eyes consuming its arc, and its inevitable fall. They say it shatters into a billion pieces called stars, but I swear it’s all infinite, we’re little more than each other’s consequence, less one another’s faults.

As I work at this novel, somehow your spirit underscores the pain? Picturing and considering the horrendous image of combat and the hidden scars of war..so cliche, I know, I wanted to share my pain, shake the pain, mark the loss, cull my insight into the meaning of these merciless, forever wars that do shatter families, and tribes, and children and honor, and my self-respect, therapeutically analyzing the soul, begging for relief from the guilt and shame. Instead, I wander around the imagination, justifying our separation, which occurred beneath this thundering cloud of harried, inexcusable guilt, questioning my full sanity and pretending to not really care about you today.

It’s all connected, I suppose. First love, first war. Last exit, final atonement. You asked me not to go, yet I did. You begged me to come home and I lost my way. It’s all part of the cosmic shift; no past, no future, just right now. Was any of it ever real for you as it was for me love? If you could wake-up again on that couch, safe, secure, cherished, would you want to return? Me? I’m still there, in a way, like I’m still on that dusty street half a world away. The snapping stench of a murderous city pounding my fists, trying to break this terror, this mirror, escape this other dream.

It’s that place that will forever delineate the truth of that soft afternoon watching you sleep. I try not to go there too often. There are only so many tears I can shed at once.

I miss you. I always do.