terminus homoeosis

With darkness, wrapped up in this place.
In shadows, can make out your face.
Lights dismal grey from sultry sight.

The rise and fall your music brings
of living little, precious things;
here in that greenish, star-punched light.

Vibrations ring from exhaled wind.
Consciousness stirs from deep within,
asks, How this scheme works out alright?

Answers dim against the glow:

"We cannot ever hope to know.
Only sigh, exist, & be content.

This cosmic order spun in place -
we simply hope, then run our race.
Until in life, we are all-spent.

Then in the end, can each prevail.
Against dear death, we do not fail.
But upward, skyward are we sent."

Glory-echoes still our sight;
The light's to us in moments lent
so in the end, we stand erect
as men, as life, as God's select.

-RLL (c) 2005

brief encounters with what is "other"

How terrifying, he never grew from that moment. How starkly awakening; he never changed. How darkly appropriate he never moved. How pitiable, but how appropriate - after all these years.

She wouldn't imagine touching it; wouldn't imaging looking for her's. It's been in the back of that lightless closet for years now, and she wouldn't imagine pulling it back out now. Dusting it off. Putting it on. Looking in the closest mirror and seeing her whole life come back to her in a flood. Feel all the mixed emotions she felt then. Knowing all the confused things she knew then. Holding all the same bits of the same broken dreams she held then.

How unthinkable that would have been. How unacceptable. How indecent. How wrong. So wrong she'd never do it.

But some part of her's glad he still tries it. Glad someone's still back there. Glad someone still holds on to that world. Glad someone knows those days and those times and those dreams, still. Glad someone still remembers. Because she couldn't.

But something in her's glad he does.

-RK

desecrate

In stone-gray suit jacket and rough-taylored jeans walks little one down the street. Only today, she's wondering what went wrong to make her feel so dead - so listless - so callous inside. But she needn't wonder too long. Because there it is - the shadow of all the dead men before her. And she knows - not they, but she wronged herself.

Second chance. Second choice. Second decision that might have been more right.

A flick through the pages of the past tell us little one's inadequate. A bit of smoke from the candle-light reminds us she's still burning. A pile of the ashes collected from her miserable little tales tell us little one isn't doing so well.

Smoke collecting first on the ground, then rising through the clean air; rising to meet the ceiling where the smoke detectors are. But she's been lying under that bad air for far too long. Without warning. Without breath.

Been so long under that oppression, wasting away.

Constant hymns singing from the jukebox in the diner we don't frequent anymore. A bad marionette, strings shredded so we can't take control. A wire framework of all the logical explanations you had in mind. But none of them twined enough to hold much weight after all.

Strength shows in design. And we're being designed by our sins - by our sacrifical wrongs, by our thinning-out blood. We're spilling our own blessings on our own little stacked-up alters, little concern to what says the skies above. We're painting watercolor images of our deeds and making carbon-copied documents of our lives. And we're still dancing on the mountain; the mountain where the world watched as they killed him.

Death bringers - all of us. Dragging death captive behind our backs, pointing fingers at our executioners and poking sharpened sticks at life, prodding and jeering until it can't stand erect.

Then we crusify it. We chistianize it. And we desecrate it.

-RK

[I want to be alive]

Let's see how long it would take to put all your shortcomings in a shadow box and have them labeled for quick reference. Then, after the twenty-some-odd years it'll take, we'll plaster it up on the wall so that the next tennants of this house can't ever get it down.

Sure, this house would sell just fine then. But it'd sell a hell of a lot better than if we made my shadow box first. If we made mine at all.

Maybe it's a bad idea. Or just a bad representation on a set of bad esoteric claims. Maybe it's just bad enough to actually work.

But that doesn't change things here - in this tiny little apartment room - where you're laying on top of these white sheets with a cup of tea in your hand and that damn smile on your face. It doesn't change the paintings we've hung on all four white walls that close us in here, that make our lives little black shoeboxes of the existence you say we're allowed to live.

We say we're so happy; happy enough to live that way for now. We say that our little shoebox-world is a safe enough place to settle down until we get something else altogether. Then we say, if we walked even down those dark old forest trails, we'd be stabbed to death for sure.

So we don't.

We don't breathe the clean air. We don't wear our clean clothes. We don't bother to eat more than scraps from our own cluttered table.

We don't live convincing lives.

We live like corpses traveling upper row until we're sent back down to our graves with a bow of our heads and a bend in our backs and the soft utterance of "hopstoctch" echoing from steely breath unbreathed beside us.

We all live with the same bated breath - living simply waiting to die.

-RK

Teen Titans speaks for America:

America is obviously good. And after how many years, Britain is still the bad guy. He even makes a point to wear a union-jack outfit and post union-jack stickers all over his house. He's got red hair and busts it out like John Lennon. And he'll say "bloomin'" constantly, call you and your buddies a "lot", and if you piss him off, he'll blow you up.

Silly American, this makes it glaringly obvious that he's evil.

And if you're some kind of sick hybrid of American and Bristish? Hm. Well, you could stop being an ass and get over that British crap -- because if you say "trousers" or call our freedom fries "chips", we'll stare at you like you're from Mars. And we don't like Martians. I think H.G. Wells proved that well enough for us.

Whew, it's a damn good thing America isn't prejudice anymore.

-RK

god's got this one

What's that you say, I'm a sinner? What, you're saying I'm not living my life right? You think that I've got things going on I shouldn't? You think you can tell me that I'm sinning? Well, that's judgemental. That's not grace. And I'm a messed up human -- I need grace, not your legalistic religion.

Because all we want to hear is grace. What we want to know, over and over again, is that God loves us -- just like we are, lost in our sin and drowning in our sorrow. We want to know that we're accepted, that we're loved, that we're okay like that in the book of the all-powerful creator.

So don't tell me how I should live my life. Don't remind me that sin isn't just a personal situation. Don't tell me how my sin is bad. Because I've got it settled with me and God - and He loves me like this. So, I don't want to hear it.

I want to be loved, accepted, included in the kingdom of grace. And I don't want to work, I don't want living faith. I just want to put my hand up in bible class and say I "believe in God". I just want to sit in my church and say "amen" whenever the preacher gets over-emotional.

Don't give me that "fire and brimstone" talk about not sinning, about payment of debt, about judgement. Don't tell my my teddy-bear god is actually the God of justice; the God that counts the sins of the universe - and sent his son to repay all the debts humanity accrewed. Don't tell me my cozy little god is actually the just and jealous God that punishes sin. Don't tell me my sins have consequences even God's forgiveness won't blot out.

Don't tell me my pajama god is really the God of the universe, and don't tell me He cares whether I live or die by the flesh. Don't tell me I'm dead to my sins -- you're just judging me. And my god wouldn't do that.

So, obviously, there is nothing wrong with this world-view. Nothing at all.

-RK

thieved

Shudders down, close the blinds. Keep blind eyes from seeing any of that light. Silently let it slip, your mind - your sanity. Just give me another moment. Soon, maybe you'll see something beautiful to you.

Or you'll see the darkness of death before it collapses again.

Words. Synapses in the back of the mind. Electricity serving in our heads what we call the english language. but language breaks apart. Even though its something more like divine languages we don't dare to whisper. Because we don't speak in tonuges. Because we don't dare test them. Or anything.

But wield your double-edged sword like a butter-knife through stone-cold ice. Cut like diamond, things like I hate you and I wish you'd die.

It was so easy before, before you died - before you went home. Before you lost your way. Before you sent me to lock me up and throw the keys of my soul away - like taking out the trash to the back of the laundry, where there's dumpsters labels "food trash only". But, you'll ignore those and you'll toss my heart in too. In with all that rotting trash, in with all that desolate rubbish.

That's that, isn't it, then. That's all you've got to give me. That's all I could take.

But I stole the ideas for this too. You'll see it, if you look close enough. But I'm not afraid of taking it, word by word, from you. I'm not afraid to talk, to tell, to huddle like a scared jackrabbit against you. Not afraid of you. Now we'll see how you see it.

I need you
Shape me +
mold me,
hit me +
hold me.

To
kiss me +
shake me.
miss me +
break me.

leave me +
love me.
leave me +
love me.
leave me +
I need you

So cry or scream
kick or leave
just please, please
don't forget me

-RK

What I'd fear'd for so long

Simple. Quick. Plain and painless. Like a Band-aide, like super glue. Like a soul coming undone under the weight and strength and faith of you.

Packing bags, shoving all I've got in a black busted suitcase, and getting in the car to leave all this rubble, all this scavenged rubbish behind. So say goodbye to me, say your farewell. I'll see you in September, when I'm half another year older. I'll see you when the season's change, when the leaves turn sage, when the wind blows over another leave, another page. And another tale is told that we'll tell your kids when we're older.

Load up all this pretencious, precarious bull-shit in a fruit basket backseat and the trunk of my car, 'cus I've got to get going... 'cus I've got nowhere to go.

Pick up my guitar; I'll write a song for you, about you, to you, for you. I'll hum, sing to words that I've written in my mind and on my head. I'll sit in the corner of coffee shops in downtown Boston, where I've heard the coffee's alright - and I'll just think, just dream, just kill myself for having thought - one last time - of you.

Or you'll remember me on your way to Atlanta - and Albaquerque, Texas. And Chicago, Illinois. Or just the sunny down-south, where they claim they're still getting rid of the old racism. But I know where it's worse, up in the north of here. Where it still gets cold in the winters, and they still throw rocks at windows and bricks into living rooms, and they still hate you and I - because we're different.

God forbid.
I though you'd love me. God forbid.
I though you'd need me. God forbid
Forbid the things I thought you'd tell me, still...

Reverie, motionless, like a whispered prayer in the great halls of your old cathedrals. In the alley-ways of your older streets, with older buildings yet. And old folk keeping old shops and old tea houses that still bring you tea in a pot with a spoon and cream and sugar - and maybe even one of those knowing smiles on their face.

Damn, how I love this city.
Damn how I love the scape I find in it - in getting lost there.
In losing you there.
In losing me, my mind there.

In losing my soul there. And probably for you, to you.

I'll be home one of those days, you see. I'll get it together and I'll stop eating with swine - and I'll be home someday. And you'll love me for it, and you'll dine with me for it, and you'll make me sick from it. And you'll embrace me and hold me and keep me locked away in the highest room and the tallest tower and the coldest staircase up to the thinnest spire for it.

And you'll say, I'll protect you. But I'll believe you.
Because I'll love you.
Because I'll need you.
Because I'll be a jacked up mess, too.

Because I'll forget where all these bags, where all these things came from. And I'll forget how to get home. And I'll stay with you --

because what else, on the face of this smouldering planet, would I do but to exist in peace with you.

-RK

This too shall pass

This depth appears to be irreversible. This silent reverie in the darkness of the soul -- it's unalterable. Like a hurricane, like rain. Like the wind in the trees, like the ice on the water in the dead of a winter blizard. Like what we imagine will be the end of all days.

It's unchangable for now.

So I will sit under the harbor. I will wait under the overpass for the tornado to pass. I will huddle in this little hovel, until the storm is past.

And I will hold to the promise...

Pray that it, too, is true.

-RK

struggle with me, I'll struggle with you

But not like society, not with the yelling, not screaming, not the rage that's been burning all week in the furnace of you-can't-you-could'nt-but-still-you-didn't. (Suprising.) My calm, my serene. Telling the tales of how the weekends start out the desperate down-hill trend. Then the finer points of symobology that was spread out over the dinner table that negated the chance of worship before it graced the electronic radio-waves between the city of angels and city of wind. Heaven and earth. Sky and ground.

Hour laters. And, there's a messege in the inbox warning me that, in two weeks, I'll be in the colder regions of this it's-too-damn-vast country. Cuddled warm in your arms, head on your shoulder, rest dwindling down quiet in your embrace, stealing snatches of oxygen from your air.

Wait. There's 24 hours per day. 60 minutes per hour. 60 seconds per minute.
6:48 pm.
How much of a day is that?
I'm no good at math. Maybe you can sort that out for me.

Existing for two and some-fraction-of-a-day days in the vibrations and echos of your light, anyway. Light I've been yearning for. Light I'd been shivering for. Light you should know I'd die for.

In other words, I can't wait.

-RK

See, I make happy.

Desperation, aggression, exhaustion, repression, remose, retaliation, reclusion, regret.

I won't sleep tonight, but it isn't because I'm not excrutiatingly tired. It's not because I can't seem to lay myself down in cold sheets and go through another night, tossing and turning - turning and tossing. It isn't because I feel listless or useless or valueless. Not because the shadow falls between this line and that, beause black and white have all gone gray, because the world I'm imaginging - you aren't a part of it again.

All that's not why I won't sleep.

I couldn't if I tried. I'm restless. On the inside, where all my feeble vulnerablility-matter rests on the tarnished throne of my chest cavity. Where all of my life-force and spiriti-blood stirs up all mixtures that concoct whatever I'm made up of. No. There's something simmering, something brewing like bad ale. Something about to boiling point, something about to overflow over the edges of the little cup I'm keeping me in.

And when it does, I'm just afraid no one's there to witness the demise, effectively infer the destruction - later, clean up the mess I'll make of it.

So I'll sweep up my own remains. I'll throw my own throw-up in a bucket that I found in the back of the janitor's closet, and I'll mop up the floor. And you'll never know how sick, how ill, how nausious I was, in spite of my best efforts to feel alright.

You'll never hear the echoes of this sick stomach or see the ashes of this burned up relic of a once living thing. And you might not have known the sanctuary of this old church-yard ruin, but now you'll never have to chance my cemetaries to see it.

So be at peace, and I'll pretend to, too. And we'll make happy together. Because that's what people ought to do anyway.

-RK

Not now, Aeolius, not now.

I wrote this to tell you, I'm not going to write you. Not going to write for you now.

And this is how you repay me.

This is the way you see fit to thank me, shake me, wake me up to what you call your "morning light". This is the reward that I get paid by personal check - for being near you, being with you, being for you. This is the payment, put on your debit card, that you felt compassionate enough to send me via post; and this, the verdict you're convinced makes you merciful, makes you gracious, names you mercy itself. This, the way you show me you adore me.

Wait a minute. Your adoration isn't even appreciated here, is it? Nor are your smiles made of poison and monkey-wire and chicken-shit. Or your payment, your scorn, your broken trappings of your years of hunting. Your dead prey at the base of my drying steps. Your useless bound-up hands at the foot of my wintery old, ratty deathbed.

That is how you repay me.

Let me make it simple for you.

--don't mourn.

In my notes before I left you, I forgot a few things. Forgot to tell you how you ought to've waited up for me. Cuz you'd forget if I didn't remind you; we knew that. But I went off and married you - held you, caressed you, kissed you, made love to you anyway. Stupid, thick-headed little southern girl went off and loved for you anyway.

I forgot to tell you not to leave the door unlocked, or the lights on, or the room -where you'd be asleep- cracked open a little, so I could still hear you breathing on the other side of it. Forgot to tell you not to uproot the geraniums at the base of that window box where our dreams planted them. Forogt to tell you not to light the mirror on fire - or warn you they don't burn too well. Forgot to leave you the note telling you I didn't turn off the gas on the stove in that old closet we used as a kitchen. Forgot to leave the matches behind so you could light them in there anyway.

Forgot to tell you I wanted to hurt you or kill you or heal you. Or just love you forever. But it's too late. Too late to save you, to fix me, to salvage something recognizable from the flames that wicker heart of mine set to burning. Too late to just tell you, I do still want to. Too late to restake the tents, to inhale that breath that left you and made this all disappear. Too late to undo. Too late to change. Too late to come alive again.

Too late to affect you.

-RK

confronting the demon of late-night weekend downtime

Feels like the world might be collapsing. Maybe its the academics, the stress I've forgotten over the lazy days of summer. Maybe it's just late, and I'm just tired. Or lonely.

Or some sick mixture of all of the above.

So to battle the inadequatecy complex I've accidentally tapped into, I've updated a bit of the sidebar. And I'm pointing it out to waste time until commercials are over and I can coax myself into intense interest in At First Sight. Which isn't easy - but I'm trying nonetheless. So, as a result - you'll notice the dates listed beside each of the author's links -- you'll notice they are in European format. I thought that'd be helpful to point out to those of you who don't get it right off the bat.

I realize not everyone tends toward British soceity. I can accept that. I try to be accomodating, where it counts. Where it doesn't, I allow you to muddle through on your own. Get used to that.

So, now you can keep up with updates without a)guessing or b)having key insider, first-hand info from the author. It's a way of simplifying life. Appreciate it.

And yes, this means I expect you to keep up with updates without forewarning. That's part of the advantage on my side - I can do that respectively sanely now.

-RK
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Also, notice the Wishlist. I just added that this morning [10:14]