I have come deep inside my head upon this journey,
in the middle of a deep dark storm
**
I'm driving on familiar streets through old neighborhoods
as they scramble before me
pieces of road torn up like
little black dominos
like rain being sent back to the sky
as I drive <--------------- back
to the old hometown of my mind
trying to find and fix something that I left behind
but it's something that I don't think I can hold
and something dangerous that I know I shouldn't want
because I found it in the moment I completely lost control
(you know what I'm talking about,)
(don't you?)
(you think so)
**
to undo a knot
is to complete the work
of whatever or whoever
tied the knot,
whether or not
it was tied with any sense of
control
and so I'm trying to retrieve
what it is I'm looking for in
the simplest way I know how:
by going back
retracing my steps back to
the way that I came in,
but
to a mere mortal,
time is not a knot
**
the roads which I have chosen
to bring me closer to the center
of this weary old town of my mind
than I've ever managed to get, to lying
in the grassy center of town square
sunbathing in the eye of the storm
as the skyscrapers and storefronts
are ripped to pieces in silence around me
as I feel the peace that comes from finding any origin
of undoing and reaccomplishing everything,
of breaking down in the glow of my possessions
disassembling myself, and spreading,
spreading myself in the grass as nothing,
as absolutely nothing,
these are
the
SAME
DAMN
ROADS
who cheat and betray me now, who tell me
I cannot go back the way I came in,
who do not cheat logic, but create it in spite
who change the game as it's being played
and who say "you
canNOT undo the knot of your life, it's as if
it was traced in the air by a flailing shark
out of water, unrecordable, with no grip
on the mudslide of circumstances as they approach
moment by moment, relentless, no access"
as I'm forced to turn in my captured destruction
for blackened gold, as I'm forced to face the truth
that there is no road that will ever lead
back...
as
I
fall
forward
in-
to
the
center
**
there are still minutes of my life
missing from my mind
from blackouts and overdoses,
from contact with another side
a state of energy which is
heedless to the flow of time
when I had no memory
only lucidity and light
and now, for once I find myself
wanting forbidden fruit
to see the things I've been protected from
to journey unopposed
through the endlessness of the self
as if trying to fill a leaky bucket
with a neverending river
of
consciousness
of
memory
of
existence
I am prepared to do what cannot be done in this form
and I know my greatest work is yet to come
but I will choose when it's my time
and choose to wait among the world because
I only have to die once,
just like anyone
turn inside out
shake upside down
be willing to use and to
allow myself to be used
make quiet peace with life
there is no such thing as past
there is no record, just infinity
and there's no need to go back
or even forward, for that matter
simply float
**
I've grown a life inside
the knot of myself
I've seen it rearrange before
I've had the chance to snatch it up
like a fly, like a picture
a shutter-churn, and memorize
the path and pattern of its loops,
to draw my escape plan in reverse, by rote
against the great equalizer
that levels the ground into a war zone
turning the hourglasses and
changing the locks
a faceless smile
shuffling the deck
in the foreground of a fire that's
slowly closing in, but
today,
I am driving
in the black domino rain
away from the old town
with this strange, unsettled
peace that I've found
through mud tornados
tense with pride
with wonder and worry
doubts and eyes
outside
inside
originally drafted August, 2014