all night battling within and without

I had a dream last night. I was somewhere in the far east with a group that was applying for some work contract. The day was uneventful, full of meetings. In the evening, I was with a small group that was invited by the owner of the business, that we had not met personally, to his home. Word was that he had a small daughter that had been born deformed and was near death. We all bought gifts to give to the little girl, but I wasn’t sure what to get for someone her age. The girl seemed to be surrounded by a lot of people that were watching over her. We found that we were not the only ones that had been invited and that it was her birthday. We talked quietly together as we each awaited our turn to give our gift to the girl.

It was very sad to sit there and think of the poor girl dying. When it came to my turn I forgot my gift and decided it was unimportant. I would just talk with the girl and try to comfort her. I was led by an aid that told me I would only have a moment with the girl because she was tired. I followed and had to climb up several ladders to reach the level where the girl was waiting. She was in a room surrounded by people that were just watching her. I walked to the center and knelt down and told her that I had forgotten my gift. She laughed and then seemed to become angry and came towards me. Her small body was misshapen and barely seemed human. I expected her to run into me, but she passed through my skin like a ghost and then I had the strange feeling that she was inside of me.

I was afraid at this turn of event when my mentor appeared hovering over us. His legs were crossed and he was calm. He urged me to face my fear and told me that I was not in any danger from the girl. This gave me courage I needed. Meanwhile, there was a battle of wills going on inside my body. Finally, the girl spoke to me. She told me that she was not a little girl, but was a grown woman and that she was trapped and being held hostage by all these people. She said that I had come to save her and that was my true gift. I didn’t know what to say to that. I had only come because I had been invited, after all. She went on telling me that she would separate back from within me soon and she wanted to give me something to take back with me into reality. She said there would be golden orbs in my pocket and that they were very important.

This had taken several minutes, but outside my body it was as if no time had passed and the girl was still coming at me when suddenly she turned away. The people all surrounding us were not fooled however, and i suddenly realized that they were not watching the girl to care for her or protect her. They were watching her to keep her trapped. The woman that had led me to the room turned and grabbed my wrist. She looked at me angrily. “She gave you something”, she said, “what was it?”. I denied it, saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what is going on here.”

I turned to leave and reached down to touch my pocket and was surprised that there was something there. The people in the room were all watching my reaction and immediately came after me. I had to fight my way back downstairs as wave after wave of evil watchers came after me. Each time I reached into my pocket a golden sphere would come out in my hand and when I would throw it the person attacking me and they would disappear into thin air with a pop. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like I was caught in one of those silly oriental fight movies with people all jumping and flying around. Finally, they all vanished and the household seemed to melt and changed into a commercial building with people waiting to get into the restaurant on the bottom floor. I asked the first person i saw, “where did they all go? Where is the little girl?” but they didn’t seem to understand me. My mentor appeared again and told me that I must follow my heart and face my destiny.

So, I went out into the street and could somehow feel which way I had to go. I ran down the empty streets until I came to a tall dark building that outwardly seemed totally without any life. However, I could see through the walls and there was something that was glowing deep within the building on the top floor. I entered and followed the light. On the top floor was a room full of cob webs and an old man wearing just a robe. At the center of the room was a beautiful woman that seemed to be in a coma and was surrounded by a golden circle. Somehow, I knew that this was the real the body of the one that I had met earlier. I touched her hand and found that i could talk to her again, but the old man coughed and said that she was dead and was far, far past help.

I asked her if the old man was the one holding her and she said yes. However, something told me that he wasn’t real but was only a diversion. I threw another golden orb from my pocket and he vanished. Then, I turned to find a tall man with a dark beard and dressed in fine colored robes coming at me. “You are too late”, he said as he attacked me. We fought until I had all but exhausted my strength. “You cannot defeat me” he laughed. I managed to push him away and I lifted the woman out of the circle and laid down in her place myself. She then awoke just as I went into the same coma. I realized it must have been some kind of spell or black magic that had been holding her there.

Freed, she continued the fight with the evil magician. I was aware of the battle and my surroundings but I was content to slip away into nothingness. I was falling. Falling down and spinning into a deep vortex but I wasn’t afraid. Then the beautiful woman defeated the evil man with a golden flash she and came to me and grabbed my hand pulling me back into her arms as I woke up.

to say on father’s day

last night, I was eating corn
at our local Golden Corral buffet
although father’s lips would puff up
I remember he loved to eat it anyway

whenever I would call him on the phone
he was always there with good advice
and willing to go out of his way
to help me which was so very nice

as a young child in his household
it’s true that he seemed pretty strict
but later I became a father too and knew
all was done with love for my own benefit

today, like many days, I’m thinking of my father
and missing him because he has passed away
leaving me filled with so many thoughts
so much, that I would want to say

the wonder of words

as I read and ponder between the poetry lines
the words like hands impress and caress me
a gentle voice spoken aloud in my heart
echoing across a chamber once so empty and lonely

words that reach across this vast expanse
and entangle with me through space and time
overlapping the holograms at the edges of existence
as if imprinted through me in starlight line by line

until the moment when the words linger like a rainbow
appearing with wonder in the azure skies in my mind
and I question if they will soon fade in the sun
or forever exist within me until the end of time

all night trapped in-between

I had a dream last night where I got sucked into a twilight zone world down in-between and under the floor boards. It turned out there were a lot of people there that were wondering around emotionless and having been converted into a tiny cartoon-like replicas of their original selves. Each had an assigned role to do. They took me around and had me try my hand at various jobs. My first job was to sit in front of a large fish tank and to try to communicate with the fish in the tank. After awhile someone would come, shake their heads and then tell me to follow them to my next assignment. Apparently, I was not working out at anything in this strange place. I wondered how I was ever going to get free and return to the real world.

Eventually, I ended up as a failure back in front of the fish tank. I would try to talk with them but the fish only opened their mouths and blew bubbles at me, seemingly amused that I was back. After some time, I accidentally discovered that I could sing to the fish and they would respond by saying “oh my”. Someone showed up to investigate the noise and said that obviously I should be assigned to sing in the empty opera hall. I didn’t want to do that, so I sang out to them that I wanted to stay and talk to the fish. When the sound waves of my voice hit the person, they disappeared with a pop and returned back to the real world, freed from the strange cartoon-like existence.

I knew what I should do next, so I ran everywhere, singing to everyone that I could find to free them too. People were popping out right and left and lots of people were chasing me. They shouted that I should stop because I had not been assigned to do that. Finally, the place was empty and I popped back myself. I remember thinking to myself with satisfaction as I walked away that I should now say something appropriate, like “there’s no place like home”, but I just said, “oh, I miss the fish.”

the tiger barb mob

in my aquarium tank
the tiger barb mob
chase each other around
like it is their only job

and my dwarf neon rainbow fish
seem a little confused
acting just like my tiger barbs
which has me all amused

after eating time is over
they all search for places to hide
under every nook and cranny
they just chill out and glide

at times the mob can be a little ornery
like a group of school age boys
looking for girls with pigtails to pull
but that’s why they have each other to annoy

still they give me a lot of relaxing pleasure
as I sit and watch them play
and it is as good a way as I can imagine
to bring an end to my stressful day

he’s dead, Jim

my old MSI laptop recently began acting a little weird
which I attributed to the free upgrade to Windows 10
so, I wiped everything away and installed a Linux OS
which was working great until the very end
when the old machine just refused to boot anymore
and the hard disk wouldn’t even spin
I tried but couldn’t coax out even a little beep
and so I realized it was time to buy a new laptop again

oh how I’ll miss my old keyboard, I feared
because they don’t make them like that much anymore
now the keys are mostly chiclet island buttons
a style that I kinda really abhor
until I bought my new Dell XPS 13 ultrabook
and found a new laptop that I really adore
it’s well built and has a really beautiful screen
and so, I really couldn’t ask for anything more

all night and forever in a moment

Last night, I had a dream that our planet was visited by an alien device. People sort of went crazy. There were nations trying to destroy it, other nations trying to destroy each other, while others waited to see what happened. After circumnavigating the planet and seemingly mapping the entire surface, the device began to emit a multicolored beam that turned whole cities into crystalline objects with many facets. The objects then folded onto themselves until whole cities were the size of book which was then absorbed into the alien device.

After the first city was gone, the battle intensified but to no avail. No human weapons had any impact on the alien device. It was like it wasn’t really here. Perhaps, it was safely hidden in some unseen and undiscovered dimension and we were only seeing a mere reflection of the reality of it. It’s hard to say. The device went from city to city and began to empty the planet of all evidence of human life. These were desperate and depressing sights. Humans scattered like cockroaches when the light is turned on at night.

In the end there were a small group of people that believed that they would be chosen to survive. They were wrong, as it turned out. And the alien device swept them away with the rest of humanity. Then it came to be my turn. I had done everything I could think of to save the one that I loved and her children, but there was no defense against the alien device. When the multicolored lights swept over me I felt for a moment that I was like a bug trapped in amber. The lights folded around me in strange angles and then there was complete darkness and I thought it was the end.

Next, I opened my eyes and I was at a beach house with her and I could hear the surf and the children playing. Somehow, I knew I was trapped in a moment of a memory and that I was now nothing more than a hologram stored in the alien device. I looked at her in that moment and smiled thinking that there could be worse places to spend forever. And then I woke up.

plunder to pay for it all

once, when the Roman Emperor and Senators
wanted to buy off the people with bread and circuses
they just sent out their legions to conquer and plunder
to take the money needed to build a coliseum or provide services

now, our leaders just tax and spend and print more money
and when that still isn’t enough money to pay for it all
they borrow and plunder from our own children’s future
which I fear can only lead to our society’s ultimate downfall

2015 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,800 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

without

searching without looking
hunting without any prey
knocking with no answer
speaking with nothing to say

dancing with no partner
hoping without any hope
yearning without learning
laughing without understanding the joke

a cold dark nothing

it sounds like it’s raining hard outside
or maybe that’s all in my head
my room somehow seems smaller today
so, I think I’ll go back to bed

then I dream that I’m back at our family cabin
surrounded by the green trees of Tennessee
my father is trying to stop the flooding
the source of which is just a mystery

next, I hear someone crying in the distance
but I don’t have my glasses, so I can’t see
and I hear the sound of tears falling
that plop and echo eerily

I have the weird feeling that I’m missing something
something that should be important to me
but my searching mind comes up with nothing
only a cold dark nothing that is silent and empty

a better you and me

I wonder, if the nature of sentient life is a path
that is always destined to end in tragedy?
perhaps, we were better off in our distant past
living in the jungle and sleeping up in a tree

do we think we can be saved, in the end
if only we have enough time to invent more technology?
before we destroy each other and all life on this planet
perhaps, we really need to invent a better you and me?

and is our futile yearning for romance and one true love
only a silly modern Disney fantasy?
how sad is it to see all our inner hopes and dreams
come to face with a universe of such harsh reality?

wouldn’t it be better to not know good and evil
and to never experience the depth of human cruelty?
wouldn’t it be better to still be in the garden
simply existing completely naturally?

I look up at the stars but don’t find any answers
only that our purpose and the meaning of life is such a mystery
and I face the bitter knowledge that we would be blissfully unaware
if only we had never eaten from that tree

don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time

so, I’m sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning
trying to eat some breakfast, so that I can take my pill for the pain
when I hear the sounds of someone being investigated on Law and Order
coming from my living room and almost driving me insane

but, I have to stop eating and listen to the intense voices
because I can’t help but wonder who just got shot and what is going on
until it hits me that they are actors in a make believe story
and no one was killed because it isn’t even a real gun

after which I finish eating my bowl of cereal
thinking it’s not good to waste precious time
so, we should all turn off our TV sets and enjoy life
but we don’t and that is the real crime

Let’s talk sex

Why is it so important and natural
Why do some like it strange and kinky
Why do women supposedly like it big
When so many men are sadly just dinky

Why does it seem to sell everything
Why does it get politicians into trouble
Why is it so romantic and lusty in literature
When, in reality, it just bursts our bubble

Why does it make us feel so good
Why does it make some feel ashamed
Why does it lead to so much frustration
Who is the one, in the end, to be blamed

Why do we daydream about it
Why do we do it in the back seats of cars
Why do we think about it when driving to work
When will we get the chance to do it on mars

Why does it take two to tango
Why do some people like it rough
What does it all have to do with love
And why do we never seem to get enough