Dear Diary,

So I haven't written to you since I was five. Maybe I was six, it's hard to recall.

But back then, did you know that I hated you, Diary? You and your stupid unicorns and bright, colorful rainbows and pictures of how the world would be if I could get you to listen to me.

To be honest, I was never very good at that, Diary.

I didn't have the words you wanted, or the sorts of emotions you covetted, or the life you could claim as another one of your products, your children, your lifelong lovers.

I never wanted you, Diary. Yet for a while, you managed to get to the worser, weaker parts of me. But for that you went and deceived me, Diary; led me to think you were reading, caring, listening, knowing, understanding. Made me believe you'd love me. Made me believe you'd have me.

But it didn't take too long before my contempt for you was stronger than your deceit, dear Diary. My hatred, anger, firey rage pitted against you was enough to burn you up in these grey eyes. To light you on fire - but not to take away your power to own all the secrets of my generation.

When I saw what you'd done to us, I wanted to repay you, Diary. Wanted to get you back - to get my retribution, my revenge. But I'd have to do with burning you and your dirty pages full of dirty lies that no one should write in letters, least of all, to you.

It's been years since I've seen those letters, Diary. Such pitiful cries of such a desperate, pathetic child. Still so ashamed I scribbled your name -- wrote all that sentimental bullshit to you. Told you how I loved you and him and the world, but felt frightened and cold and alone.

From them, you'd be sure to think I was hopelessly tragic, Diary.
But you'd be wrong. Wrong about me. Wrong about so many of us who mistakenly set our pens to you. Wrong about millions, every day, Diary.

Little lost ones who mistakenly write their love to you. Frantic, fearful ones who tragically write their suicides for you, knowing that you'll read them all. Frightened lonely ones writing on dead ones to you; praying all their prayer to you, Diary. As if you were some god who could bring them back. As if you were some diety we ought to be praying to.

So many, too many do: set up their alters, bow their pens, and write their penance to you, Diary.

Do you ever read them? Do you ever know? Do you even bother confessing how you're just a dead god, just a faint glow, just a pretentious image we've all created together - to make our souls feel better?

Did you ever warn us, Diary? Or did you think you didn't have to?
I was just wondering; I just wanted to ask.

Sincerely,



-------
-RK

A Detailed Response to Your Outlined Policies

At what point do people stop being human beings? From what effect - what inevitable end does our compassion and mercy and love fail us? When is it that this broken down mechanical institution we claim to speak against is all we know to stand for? How are we now so far past rationality that we can only become politically puppetted proponants of our own educational machines? How is it that we reach drowning point from our own philosophies; settling so far down that we no longer fathom the need for human kindness, for patient understanding, for true altruism?

What rampant force causes us to see with blind eyes? Names that we cling with white palms to policies and democracies and etymologies that must be upheld. Demands without descent that policy proceed life in our mixed-up minds.

Fervantly do we decry the uneducated, the illiterate, the uncivilized. Constantly do we bleed need for education, for intelligence, for high intellectualism. Plying desperately the urgent necessity for virtuous individuals in a virtueless world. Slathering ourselves in cleverly stated cliches on the poor, downtrodden state of ignorantly savage lesser-societies.

Then, we turn our Lexuses and our SUVs home to sit in our comfortable arm chairs, unaffected by the world about us. Reading posh magazines on the biochemical reactions of morality in the American mind, while sipping on a warm Starbucks attempt-at-a-latte. Or maybe we simply ponder the "pertinant issues" in our heads - like worldviews and syllabi and course outlines published well in time.

But we aren't really living, breathing, loving creatures anymore; are we? Oh yes, we still claim to have some warmth left in our closed-up capillaries, but do we let the warm blood flow on through our hearts, through our limbs, through our brains? Do we still contain, even in minute increments, the capacity to conceive of the need for propogation of ideals this world is starving for?

Or are we, instead, so beyond those below us that we do not see the need.
Are we so far advanced that we do not need to breathe?
Are we so far evolved that we do not need to dream?

So, this what intellect feels like nowadays? This is what education amounts to in our day and age? And this is how love teaches us to grow, adomishes us to learn, pushes us to achieve?

If ye, then a depressing state of depravity is where you and I are headed. And you, my pretty little lady of liberty, are no longer worth your weight in rusted-down iron. Even you and you're propogation, dear Adventism, are no longer a worth-while aim. If this is all what you mean to make of us.

Pray, we all think again.

Pray, at some point, we all rise from our chairs and take the train into London versus writing your meaningless essays. Pray, we laugh at the obsurdity of your expectations versus bowing to your idols of interdisciplinary discussion. And, pray, we be willing to achieve "failure" in order to prove our worth to you, instead.

-RK

Coffee comes from cherries, you twit.

So that hot black liquid we like to think of as "sexy" or at least sensual, it's not from a bean at all.

I remember the days back when I used to claim I hated cherries. Yet, in reality, we owe them a hell of a lot more than we thought we did. From espresso served in an authentic Italian cafe latte to a bad mug of sludge shoveled into tacky Starsucks cups - you name it, they all come from what? Trees. Cherry-like fruit trees. Arabica fruit trees, at that.

Nobody explained that when you picked up an espresso bean to fall enamored over it. Nobody told you that when you were all thinking "maybe it's from Italy". Nobody made a peep when you pondered it's origin, what it looked like before it got to you, or what it's mother used called it before she sent it away from home. Nobody told you coffee was a fruit seed.

So. We all thought we were great coffee...no, no espresso aficionados.
Turns out we hardly knew anything at all.

-RK

darkside is dead.

That was supposed to be poetry. Supposed to be about life and humanity and everything gone wrong. That was supposed to be about society.

But when Evo died, he decided that then. Decided when he laid out to die on those sheets in that ill-fitted bed. Decided my thoughts were already burning through based-down water, my mind already reeling through empty ones and zeros.

I needed that, though. Those little electrical synpases duplicating my thoughts into electronical moments. Little tiny pixels filling my mind with your mingled black-brown eyes, sending those little shudders fron blue-black spine to my muddled-up mind...

Yeah, I needed that. Needed to sort through old rubbish. Sift through old photographs that don't yellow, cyphon through old documents that don't mellow-down, don't water out, don't fade after years of misuse.

You remember how he and I thought we knew what we meant to each other. That other we -- that other "you" and that other "me". Thought we understood; thought we knew about each other. Back then, through things like "either there's no road away from here..." or worse, like "maybe take more than a week" or so. Conversations like that, had over salad and beef, over fries and a shake. Conversations we had where we were decieved.

Conversations we read, and then we delete.

He needed to break, poor broken-down Evo. Needed to rest, needed to sleep. He needed to lay his head down and dream. He needed to burn. He needed to fade.

And I'd write you a eulegy, an elegy, or both. But I don't think you'd notice now, if I tried to say so. Oh. And I'd have Fate compose you a few lyrics or two, set it to that music that always gets to me and you -- but I don't know it'd matter, don't think it'd do. Don't think it'd do much to really phase you. Or even bring you back from the ghosts, in the past where I left you.

So here, I'll say goodnight. I'll get you checked one last time. Then I'll say my goodbyes...
Dammit. I hope you're alright.

-RK

Here's a toast to you and your's

So, some of you seem to think I can write. Sometimes, even I imagine I can. Not as if it's always clear what that means or stands for or implies for the rest of existence.

Does this matter? Not very much.

That, it seems, is becoming a theme. Along with this drought of anything authentically good to base soceity on. Instead, there's all the ripping and tearing, shuddering then popping noises from fragile chest cavities breaking open to put all their ineptitude on display for anyone to look at, to gawk at, to laugh at, to curtail around.

I suppose, though, there's something to it - to the way we can't fight hard enough to fund a cure for it; the way we can't get rid of these cancerous genes we're so used to living with. The way that if we ever did, we'd inevitably extinct ourselves.

It's almost tragic when you think about it. When you sit down with your warm latte that isn't from Italy, and you begin to imagine how 'one day, things'll have to get a bit better'. But then, you remember Venice is still sinking; the Pisa Tower is still leaning; the statue depicting all of our so-called morals is still rusting away. And she's getting weaker by the seconds and moments and days we spend shopping and gossiping and lusting after lives we don't live.

Soon, it'll all collapse. And our little refuge, our little fortress will get lost under the dust that settles over dead generations; the ones that tried too hard to exist in vacuums or outer space or somewhere across the sea in places something like Iraq.

Oh, sure. Maybe a few greats might be recalled to memory at the end of it. Or maybe just the psychopaths.

Maybe after a while they'll put up monuments and relics and gravesites marking where our lights used to shine.

Then again, maybe they won't.

Maybe they'll lend some aid to the poor, and the needy, and the desperate disenfranchized orphaned infants dying of AIDS in places we don't want to look. Maybe they'll do it for our sake.

Then again, maybe not.

Maybe they'll look at the shambles of our attempted lives, our attempted meanings; and they'll finally learn how to care for each other, how to cherish each other. How to love each other.

Then again...

I get the sneaking suspicion that the generations are getting successively colder. More numbed and dumbed down. Quieter. Less like statues, more like antiques. Less like humans, more like figurines.

Maybe among them will arise an Elijah or a Theresa or another Angel Gabriel to send some message to a dying world.

Or maybe all our refuse will just slowly simmer until the fire rises high enough, until the light grows bleak enough, until the metal grows red enough, until the children grow weak enough to blow away all the wheat from all the chaff.

Maybe it's the downfall of our generation. Maybe we're too numb to really ever know it. Too oblivious to ever really care.

Or. What if there is still hope? What if it isn't humanity and generational gaps and latest style trends we ought to blame; but ourselves.

-RK

living, loving

Darkness twirling in a little closed space.
A light might make it a room.
A lamp might even make it home.
And you, you might've done something;
before it got so bad.

Before this room looked so empty.
Before these walls seemed so hollow.
Before this angst felt so poignant.

Instead, we've all been dying here for decades now
while death doesn't notice, doesn't aid us, doesn't break us.

We've just been burning up for centuries now,
without any of the ash to put some of the fire out.

We're just waiting, decaying for lifetimes now,
without some of our bones starting to show through the rotten sores.

It's because we're all lost.
See, we aren't really dying.
Aren't really burning.
Aren't even decaying.

Aren't really breathing,
Aren't really moving,
Aren't even caring
Because we're lost.

-RLL (c)2006

As always, critique/comment/aid in harboring!
I've decided this is a preliminary forum to dA, so if you see a poem here -- "it needs YOU {uncle sam que}"!

morning after

It felt fresh yesterday, at midnight or three am - while we were sitting up together. It felt new and exciting and invigorating. Felt interesting and intriguing and suprising. Felt like it might really mean something or change something or make something better somehow.
What a pity that feeling didn't last past last night. What a shame early this morning we woke up from that dream again, realizing where we were and remembering who we are. Recalling, through the fog, what we were all doing there.

It's a shame it didn't last, though, that feeling. That fresh, new, alive, awake feeling. While it did, I felt like I could do anything - like I could fly...

Maybe too many people felt like they could fly yeseterday. Maybe too many people tried. For building tops and skyscraper roofs, from speeding, drunken cars on iced-over highways.

I'll avoid the news reports this morning. I don't want to know how many people woke up with the same feeling in their gut, with the same dread in their soul, with the same pounding in their head. Counting and recounting all the drinks they had, and realizing that the ill, sick feeling they've gotten can't be from too much booze. Realizing they slept in the wrong bed, ate at the wrong house, or were simply too quick to be satiated by the three-ring-pleasure-circus around them.

And in one blink of an eye, in one beat of the heart, they spent it all away.

I think I kept some for myself; managed to tuck some away under the matress so that in the morning, if I was wrong, I'd still have a chance. Half the world's population didn't do that. Half the world's population won't care.

But China, she's quiet this morning. With her paper walls and her blossoming pagodas and her wafting incence in her high-roofed temples. Meditating, praying for the improbable propriety and impossible peace of a west she doesn't want to infect her lands.

I can't say I blame her.
Take a look around. Take a look at the after-math of the after-parties of all the celebrations we flair up. Look at all the litter and the refuse and the men sleeping with other brother's wives, and the women entangled with other mother's boys. Look at all the fodder left on the ground after all the fireworks are out.

I hope we're proud of ourselves. Because, maybe, that'd help.

-RK